Chuck vs Mrs Know-It-All
by Zettel
Summary: AU novella. An advice columnist happens upon an arresting stranger, resulting in dangerous feelings, confusions, and errors. A romantic dramedy.
1. Chapter 1

AU novella. An advice columnist meets an arresting stranger, resulting in dangerous feelings, confusions, and errors.

* * *

A/N1: As practice in writing novellas (_Dying to Death_ reawakened my interest in the form), I wrote this. I shared it with some readers who convinced me that posting it was preferable to leaving it inert on a word processor. The story is finished. If there is interest, I will post it over the next little while. Eight chapters. This first is a scene-setting chapter. The story borrows plot from a movie, _Please Kill Mr. Know-It-All,_ but it ultimately travels its own path. I don't own _Chuck _or the movie. No money made.

* * *

**Chuck vs. Mrs. Know-It-All**

CHAPTER ONE

* * *

_Dear Mrs. Know-It-All,_

_I have a problem. I have been in love with a woman for almost two years, but I cannot decide if she loves me too or not. She rarely talks about her past or her feelings. At times, it seems clear that she does have feelings for me. At other times, it seems crazy to think so._

_We once shared the most passionate kiss of my life, but then she became icy toward me the next day. (It didn't help that her old flame came back to town!) I don't know what to do and I admit I am beginning to freak out about the whole situation. Should I try to find someone else - maybe someone more normal, more capable of sharing herself - or should I hold on?_

_She has beautiful blonde hair. _

_Thanks in advance,_

_Desperate Pocket Protector_

* * *

Chuck Bartowski put his pencil between his teeth and leaned back in his desk chair, stretching his long legs out under his desk at the same time. Inadvertently, he kicked over one of the several tottering stacks of books in his study/living room.

"Damn!" he carped, but then got excited: his copy of Henry James' _The Ambassadors _was among the toppled books; he had been searching for it off and on for almost a week.

He reached under the desk, banging his forehead against it in his eagerness to secure the James. "Damn," he said again, but he did not pause to rub his forehead until he had the book in his hand and had put it on the desk. As he rubbed his forehead, he looked at the wild snowdrifts of paper that obscured his desk. If he wasn't careful, the James would go under a drift to be lost for again, for weeks, or months, or years. He made himself a mental note to move the book to his nightstand later. It was the fortieth or so mental note he had made that morning.

He looked away from the book and at the letter on his computer screen again. "Geez, poor Desperate Pocket Protector...Probably a hopeless loser." Chuck spun his desk chair quickly and hard, pulling up his feet and allowing it to rotate one-and-a-half times, so that he ended up facing away from his desk after the brief whirligig.

He glanced around the room. The floor was covered in books and papers. There were bookshelves along the walls and books on almost every flat surface of the room. Besides books and papers, and his desk and chair, the room hosted only an armchair, a loveseat and a couple of lamps. On the wall were a couple of movie posters - one of _Grosse Pointe Blank_ and another of _The Fifth Element_. His beloved _Tron _poster, a gift from his late father, was on the wall in his bedroom. Thinking of his bedroom, he got up, remembered his mental note, and grabbed the James as he rose. He walked to his bedroom. It too was a farrargo of books and papers. He put the James down on top of a stack of books on his nightstand. He turned to look at the _Tron_ poster.

xXx

Chuck's parents had both died in a car wreck a little after his ninth birthday. He and his sister, Ellie, had been forced to live with his father's mom, a woman who had handed down the psychological instability that had plagued his father - the instability that Chuck feared was the cause of the car crash. His grandmother meant well and she loved Chuck and Ellie, but Helena Bartowski had demons to contend with, and so although she managed to keep a roof over the kids' heads and to keep them clothed and fed, she was emotionally distant and unavailable, lost most of the time in dark inner struggles. She died just shortly after Ellie had turned eighteen.

The kids inherited the house and enough money to allow Ellie to afford to start college that fall. Chuck was a high school sophomore, so Ellie had to manage him and college simultaneously. But she had, in effect, been his parent for years, so she was not taking up two new roles simultaneously. Ellie, like Chuck, was gifted. Perhaps not to the degree Chuck was, but Ellie was well _above_ above-average.

Chuck had gotten a scholarship to Stanford. He had majored in software engineering but then added a psychology degree. For three-and-a-half years, he had been a star at Stanford, the darling of both the science and the humanities professors. The library had been his real home, books his best company. Finally, at Ellie's urging, he had decided to try to join a fraternity his senior year, to try to make some friends, to have a "social life", as Ellie kept saying. To his surprise, given his seniority and his bookwormishness, he had gotten chosen. He had even made a close friend - the president of the fraternity, the handsome and popular Bryce Larkin.

At first, it had been a heady thing, suddenly being included in groups that had never noticed him before, either in high school or in college. Being Bryce's satellite meant that he was surrounded by beautiful, attractive women, and since even Bryce had limits on how many women he could entertain at once, Chuck often got to actually interact with the women and got to know them. He even started dating one, a woman named Jill Roberts. Chuck had fallen for her hard; they dated for a month or so. But Chuck left to go home over Thanksgiving, and when he returned, Jill was with Bryce.

Bryce - for whatever reason, Chuck assumed it was Jill - froze him out. Jill would not speak to him. And just like that, his days of reflected popularity came to a sudden end. He finished school once again as a library ghost. The frat house was a difficult place. Bryce seemed to feel some need to demoralize Chuck, attack him. He did it frequently, and with him setting the example, the other frat brothers mostly joined in. Chuck was miserable - his friend and his (sort of) girlfriend gone, his frat brothers distant. He went back to his books. He really never left them again.

When he graduated, with only Ellie there to celebrate with him, he had thought he would get a job with Roark Industries or some other cutting edge company. But a strange thing happened. An English professor who he had taken a couple of courses with and who thought a great deal of his writing, recommended him for an open position at a San Francisco newspaper. The paper's advice columnist, a woman as old as the pyramids and still guided by Emily Post, finally retired. The paper wanted to keep the column, but to bring it into the present, to find a hip, intelligent new voice. They interviewed Chuck and had him write responses to several 'test' letters. They loved his work.

But there was a problem. The majority of the readership of the column had always been female, and most of the letters sent in were also from women. Although that had been in part because of the previous columnist, the paper was reluctant to hire a man, especially one so young, to take over. They offered him the job, but only on two conditions: that he keep his true identity secret and that his columnist identity would be _Mrs. Know-It-All_. The column would be _Ask Mrs. Know-It-All._ Chuck disliked both conditions, but the second the most. He thought that was a completely stupid title for him and for the column. But, he was stuck with the conditions and he eventually came to dislike them less. He had no desire to be known as an advice columnist, to be known to anyone as Mrs. Know-It-All. He took the job, worked hard and seriously, and the column had been on the rise steadily ever since. There was promising talk of syndication - and perhaps a book deal.

The only person who knew his real job was his longtime buddy, Morgan Grimes, who was also now working as Chuck's agent. Everyone else he knew, including Ellie (and her husband, Devon Woodcomb), Chuck was ashamed to admit, believed he worked from home as an analyst for an insurance company. It was ridiculous, hiding in plain sight like this, but it was what the paper wanted. Chuck had grown used to it and had no desire to be known as Mrs. Know-It-All.

He spent his days reading letters asking for help. He usually read the letters in the morning, chose the ones he wanted to answer, then played video game for an hour or two until lunch. He ate, then went for a walk around the neighborhood. His incredibly lazy basset hound, Dud, was normally ready to face the day by that time (Dud was a notoriously late sleeper) and he would accompany Chuck on his walks. The neighborhood had gotten used to the awkward pair: the lanky, slightly ungainly and very tall man walking along, his pudgy, low-to-the-ground dog paddling along beside him, as if one were the symbol for height and the other for width.

After the walk, Dud normally returned to his bed and snored away in the afternoon as Chuck began to compose replies to the letters chosen that morning. Typically, he was done by 5 pm and took some time to watch an hour or so of television before making himself dinner. After dinner, he and Dud took another walk, a shorter one. When it ended, Chuck went over his replies once more, and then sent the new column in. He would read it until bedtime.

And so went his life, for the most part. Sometimes on the weekends he would hang out with Morgan or visit Ellie and her husband. But mostly he kept to himself and stayed in his apartment. It was easier. He had made one foray into "social life" and it was not for him. His life had few problems of its own - but that was okay: he had other people's problems to think about.

Chuck shook his head and turned away from the _Tron _poster at last. He had a letter to answer.

* * *

_Dear Desperate Pocket Protector,_

_I would not want to be in your shoes. Tennis shoes, I bet. You sound like you have fallen in love with a wooden girl, not a real girl. A woman who cannot bare her heart over two years will likely never bare it at all, because she does not have one. Despite my name, I don't know what to tell you about the kiss: sometimes people make mistakes. Maybe she did. But if she has not kissed you again, I would say she is one-and-done. Move on, DPP, find yourself a real girl. They grow them even in California, or so I have been told. (A hint: look for a brunette: one might be easier on your heart.)_

_In Certainty,_

_Mrs. Know-It-All _

* * *

Not his best effort, but it would do. Chuck's phone rang just as he finished drafting the letter.

Morgan.

"Hey, agent-o-mine! What's up?"

"I hope you aren't."

"What?"

"I mean, I hope you are sitting down."

Chuck was used to Morgan's inability to get to the point. "C' mon, Morgan, what're you talking about?"

"We should probably meet this evening. Dinner - at the noodles place down the block from you? We can talk while we slurp."

Chuck rolled his eyes. "Please tell me no one can hear your end of this conversation, Morgan."

Silence. "No one. I am all by my lonesome in my office." That was what Morgan called his car.

"Good. Okay. I will head your way after Dud has his evening constitutional."

"One day, Chuck, you need to explain to me what a Basset Hound has to do with the Constitution."

"Morgan, it-"

"Gotta go, Chuck, got another call coming in. Chime is money. Bye, Chuck."

"Bye, Morgan."

xXx

Chuck slipped on a light jacket and checked once more on Dud. He was snoring madly in his bed, asleep on his back with his platypus paw stuck up in the air. Chuck shook his head. Crazy dog. But he was good company.

Chuck left the apartment and headed to the noodle place, _Soup and Oodles. _He got there and went in. Morgan was already at a table and waved Chuck over. Morgan was in a white dress shirt and tie. He stood. Chuck could see that the shirt was tucked into Morgan's ironed khaki pants. He even had on a dark tie.

"What's the occasion, Morgan? I haven't seen you this dressed up since you went stag to the prom." Chuck sat.

Morgan shook his head decidedly as he retook his seat. "Not stag. I had a date."

"A blow-up doll in a backpack is not exactly a date, Morgan."

"She was just a few breaths away from being my date."

"Yeah, but _your _breaths, Morgan, not hers."

Morgan grinned. "I still say I wasn't stag."

"I guess you did have that photo taken."

"And we looked good, she and I. We were happy. Until she started deflating."

"Why are we here, Morgan?"

"Oh, right. Sorry, I got lost tripping down memory lane. Good times. Anyway, I called because we got a syndication offer. Big money." Morgan's face split into a big smile. "I told you it was coming."

"That's great, Morgan," Chuck said half-heartedly.

Morgan's smile shrank. "What's wrong? Why aren't you happy? This is gonna mean serious money. You could actually afford to have someone clean your apartment, maybe buy some more bookshelves. Hell, you could buy a car!"

"What would I want with any of that stuff, Morgan. I don't know. I have told you all along that I am happy with the way things are."

"No, you aren't, Chuck. You are used to the way things are, you aren't happy with them. And, hey, it turns out this offer is...um...good news, bad news."

"What do you mean?"

"The syndication offer requires that you remain..._Mrs. Know-It-All._"

Chuck nodded. "And?...Why do I think there is an 'and'?"

Morgan blushed a little. "And they want to put _her _face out there."

Chuck sat back in his chair. A waiter came and took their order. As he left, Chuck leaned back toward Morgan. "But there is no Mrs. Know-It-All; _ergo_, she has no face."

"That sounds creepy, Chuck."

Chuck shook his head. "Morgan, did you tell them we would agree?"

"Well, Chuck, man, I can't sign for you, but I did...you know...sorta indicate we would be accepting. There's a hefty signing bonus."

"Of which you get ten percent…"

"Yes. True. But you get ninety…"

"So, a face, huh?"

"Yeah. We just need a picture."

Chuck pursed his lips. "Could it be a drawing?"

Morgan shrugged. "I guess so. Are you still handy with the pencil?"

Chuck nodded. "Yes. Maybe I can come up with something. When are we supposed to meet with the syndicate folks?"

"No definite time, but I would like to move quickly. Could we meet with them tomorrow night?"

"I guess that'd work. Would I need a face by then."

Morgan took a turn pursing his lips. He shrugged. "Probably not required, but it would be a good idea."

The waiter returned with their food. As they began to eat, Morgan sent a text to the syndicate lawyer. They set up a meeting for the next night. Chuck and Morgan chatted as they ate, Morgan telling Chuck about his regular job as a pizza delivery man. He was Chuck's agent as a side-gig.

xXx

Morgan walked - bounced, really - away from the noodle place and Chuck stood on the sidewalk for a minute. He felt restless. He knew that Morgan's news was really good news, but he was used to his life. It was not clear if it would have to change, but his gut told him that it would change things.

Maybe that would be good; maybe he needed to change. Ellie kept telling him that he did. At least she would be happy about the syndication-or she would if he finally came clean and told her that he was Mrs. Know-It-All.

Chuck decided that he was not interested in going back to his apartment right away. The theater around the block often showed old, black and white movies. He had not gone in a long time. He walked in that direction.

When he turned the corner of the block, he could see the old marquee. It was on, and they were advertising a Laurel and Hardy festival. He paid the woman in the box office and went inside. The films had already started, so he found a seat near the back and sat down. He watched the film for a few minutes, then heard a snort of laughter from beside him, across the aisle.

He looked. A beautiful blonde, her hair pulled back in a long ponytail, was staring, entranced, at the screen. While she did not laugh continuously, her smile was constant and, when she did laugh, it was a good-natured snort that seemed somehow to involve her shoulders as well. She had a bright smile, although, for some reason, Chuck has the feeling that she did not smile often. She seemed...to be smiling about smiling, like it was a stolen pleasure.

Chuck was so affected by her that he reached into his jacket pocket and took out his small notebook and pencil he always carried. Trying to be as unnoticeable as possible, he began to sketch her picture. At one point, she turned toward him. He managed to palm his pencil and to hide the notebook. The woman looked at him for a moment; she held his gaze. Then she smiled at him, a quick, sweet smile. Then she seemed to catch herself. The smile fell away and she turned back to the screen. A few minutes later, she got up and left. Chuck thought about following her, speaking to her. But what would he say? He remembered his warning about blondes given to _Desperate Pocket Protector_. Better to just let her go. He had the drawing. It would have to do.

xXx

Chuck got home. Dud was asleep, still snoring. Chuck undressed and put on some pajamas. He started to turn on the television, then decided against it. He thought of the drawing. He wanted to remember the blonde woman and remember her laugh. He retrieved the notebook from his pocket and looked at the drawing. It was good. It had captured something about her, some intelligence and depth in her gaze. He had not been able to tell quite whether the drawing was good in the dimness of the theater, although it had felt as though he were tracing her features with his hands, not using lead on paper. And in the good light of his desk lamp, he could see that he had outdone himself. He could not remember ever having sketched anyone better. The likeness made his chest ache.

It hit him: she could be Mrs. Know-It-All. That gaze. He just needed to tinker with the drawing. Copy it (he was not going to give up or mar the original) and then alter it a bit. But she - or a kind of copy of her - could be the face of his column. He looked at the drawing again.

_Mrs. Know-It-All. _

He wondered who she really was.

xXx

The next day, Chuck did the unthinkable. He broke his routine. Dud was not amused. When he rose at midday expecting his walk, Chuck was still tinkering, copying the drawing of the woman. He finally got a version he liked, and then took Dud for a walk. But by then it was mid-afternoon. The appointment with the syndication lawyer was soon. Chuck took a short walk with Dud then got himself cleaned up for the meeting. He put the sketch in a folder and put the folder in a shoulder bag. He told Dud to man the fort as he headed off, trailing a reluctance to meet Morgan and the lawyer, to sign the papers-and to change his life.

Maybe.

* * *

_Dear Mrs. Know-It-All,_

_I have a problem. I am stuck in a dead-end job. But I don't know how to do anything else, really. I could quit but I am stuck. I have developed...occupational psychoses, problems...and I worry that they will be with me my entire life, keep me from changing my life even if I change jobs. Is there any hope for me? Can I reverse course and get out of this dead-end?_

_Hoping for better but fearing the worst,_

_Old Dog in Newark_

* * *

Almost.

She was almost done with it. Almost free. Her life was almost ready to change. She could feel it. So close. She was terrified.

Sarah Walker was seated in a chair in her apartment. She had pulled the chair up to the window, so that she could look out on the streets lit up in the dark. To be honest, her apartment depressed her more every day. At one point its barren, stainless steel gleam had, if not pleased her, at least agreed with her. It had seemed a fit place in which to live her non-life: beautiful but hard, edgy and discomforting.

Her life.

So much of it turned on her conman of a father, Jack Burton. He had christened her a con before she had any say in the matter. She had been conning, playing at first bit parts then larger and still larger parts, since before she could understand what the word 'con' meant, before she would have been able to comprehend that confidence games were not really _games_ at all. When she had understood and comprehended, she was already sunk in the mire of her father's life, and with little to any sense of how normal life worked, what a normal childhood, indeed what a _childhood_ at all, looked like. Her father had made her into a hood by stealing her childhood from her.

Her life had gone on like that, con to con, until nearly the end of high school. That fateful spring, when she was beginning to think that, at eighteen, she could leave her father and the con life and fend for herself on the right side of the law, her father had made the first of the two big mistakes that shaped Sarah's adulthood. He conned a gangster. The whole thing would have blown up in his face if not for the intervention of the CIA Director, Langston Graham. Graham saved her father - but at a price. Her father ended up going to jail, and Sarah ended up getting conscripted into the CIA. Graham had manipulated her, she later came to realize, using her youth and her fear for her father against her. Graham had somehow found out about her and become interested in her, in her potential for a role in the CIA. So, at an age at which she should have been dreaming of prom and sending out graduation announcements, she was at The Farm, being trained to be a CIA agent.

Not seeing any real alternative, she threw herself into the training - much of it already familiar as versions of lessons her father had taught her - and she excelled. Graham was pleased. She graduated and went into the field. At first, she did what you might call bread-and-butter spying - most of it a darker, more fraught version of the cons she ran with her father. But after a year of covers and infiltrations, drops and pickups, Graham changed the course of her career and put her on the path he had always intended to be hers. He gave her a termination mission: she was to kill a double agent. The order was given and she was on a plane to Paris before she had any chance to think, to balk. In a phone call after her arrival, Graham insinuated that her father's upcoming parole hearing would go badly if her mission failed. She went through with it, shot that agent, a woman, on a dark, deserted Paris street. It was the worst day of Sarah's life, a day when she found out that she could kill another person. Graham, knowing that, then kept her at it, giving her several missions of the same sort over the next couple of years.

Sarah's father was paroled. But she was imprisoned. She saw no way back to a normal life: that possibility had bled out along with the double agent in Paris. It was as equally dead. But a couple of years after her father was paroled, Sarah did something Graham did not expect: she quit. Her father had fallen on hard times and had gone back to conning. It seemed that he, like his daughter, could not do _normal. _Sarah weighed her options and decided that returning to conning with her father was preferable to remaining Graham's assassin, so that is the choice she made.

A year later, her father made his second big mistake. He conned another gangster, a truly powerful, fearsome man, and that man caught him red-handed. Langston Graham was not there to 'correct' Jack's mistake mistake-but Sarah again paid the price. The gangster - Alexei Volkoff - intended to kill her father. Sarah got him to agree to a meeting - and Sarah again traded herself for her father. Volkoff accepted Sarah's services as an assassin as a 'repayment' for her father's trespass. She agreed to perform five terminations for him - after all, Volkoff had announced, smirking at her, that he was not "an unreasonable man." Since then, during the past year, during her bloody indentured servitude, Sarah had killed four men for Volkoff. Volkoff had never forced her to kill an innocent: all four men she killed had been rivals of Volkoff's, men as nearly as bloody and as evil as her 'employer'. Sarah had changed from CIA assassin to mob hitwoman. The change felt like a cruel de-evolution, from something awful to something even more awful still.

xXx

Her father had spent the last year as Volkoff's 'guest'. Sarah knew he was alive but was uncertain where Volkoff was holding him. She saw her father once a month at Volkoff's estate, but her father did not know where they were holding him (he was transported with his hands cuffed, blindfolded and with earplugs). Her father was holding up: he seemed well enough. As he said, it was like he was back in prison but with better food, comfy furniture, and the freedom to drop the soap in the shower. _I wonder why dad is funny but I never am?_

Volkoff had also exacted one more thing from Sarah - back when they struck their bargain for her father's life. An agreement that, if she were ever discovered, and could be linked back to him, Volkoff would kill her father.

Volkoff had paid Sarah for the hits she performed, but she had put the money away, living instead on the money she had accumulated while working for the CIA. She had never spent much of her CIA pay - all she had done was work. Her apartment was actually owned by her father; he had bought it while flush after a big con. She could afford clothes and food and had a roof - quite a nice roof - over her head.

She spent most of her time under it. She lived in fear of being discovered, in fear of being identified or caught, and so linked (or potentially linked) back to Volkoff. Her father's life depended not just on her carrying out her hits, but carrying them out perfectly. She had to be a ghost, immaterial and untraceable. So far, she had been. She was just waiting for the phone now, waiting on Volkoff, waiting for the fifth hit - and freedom - for her father and for herself.

It had been a visit day. She had met with her father, ate a lunch of subs and chips with him in Volkoff's pool house, then she had been escorted out. Volkoff indicated to her that he might be in touch soon about the fifth job.

The visits with her father always depressed her (and Volkoff's news, welcome in one way, sickened her in another), so she had decided to see a movie, to redirect her thoughts and feelings. She found a theater showing a Laurel and Hardy film festival: it sounded like just the ticket - something light-hearted and silly.

She had been enjoying the film but her enjoyment increased when a tall, curly-headed man entered the theater and sat down across the aisle from her. He was immediately and completely involved in the movie, laughing away at its zaniness. His laugh, more even than the scenes that caused it, made Sarah feel better. His laugh actually made her feel good. She started laughing harder, with less restraint, enjoying the thought (not true, exactly, but still heartwarming) that they were watching the film together.

At one point, she noticed that he had noticed her. For a brief second, although she looked away, she actually thought about crossing the aisle and sitting beside him, talking to him when the movie ended. But she could not do that. Far too risky. He looked like a normal guy, like a genuinely nice guy, and she was certain none of them were for her. She was alone and would remain alone.

She could feel his eyes on her as the film went on. She knew she should get up and leave. But she...liked...the feeling of his eyes on her. Liked the thought that such a man could find her worth gazing at, maybe even being interested in. It wasn't much, but it was all she could have with such a man. If he knew her, really knew her, he would turn away in disgust.

That dark thought was occupying her mind when her phone rang. Her one friend, DEA agent Carina Miller, was calling. Although they talked on the phone occasionally, they had not seen each other in person after Sarah left the CIA. Carina did not know what Sarah was doing now. When Carina asked, as she always did, Sarah evaded. Carina knew very little about Sarah's past and so she was unlikely to guess at the circumstances in which Sarah lived. Despite hating the evasions and the lies, Sarah still enjoyed their talks, even if they were always brief.

"Hey, Carina."

"Blondie, how're tricks?"

"Fine. You?"

"Stateside again-for a while, actually. Thought maybe we could finally see each other in person, do a little female bonding. What do you say?"

"Um...maybe. Not right now, but maybe soon. How long will you be stateside?"

"Until my shoulder heals. Dislocated it...badly...in my last mission."

"Was that dislocation in the line of duty? Or was it the result of extra-curricular activities?"

Carina laughed. "Not telling. So, c' mon, Sarah, let's get together. Don't make me hunt you down, spy-style. I want to see you. I miss you."

"I miss you too. Tell you what: let me call you back in a day or two. Maybe things will have gotten...clearer for me by then and we can make plans. Okay?"

Carina blew out a resigned breath that Sarah could hear over the phone. "Okay. But I will call if I don't hear from you. Really, Sarah, let's get together. I want to see you."

"Alright, Carina. I promise I will call. It was good to hear from you. I want to see you too."

"Good. Talk to you _soon._"

"Yes, soon. Bye."

Sarah disconnected. She sat in her chair, feeling the weight of her phone in her hand. She thought about the man at the movie. _I wonder what his name was? I wonder what work he does? Is he as...sweet...as he seemed?_

She stood up and put her phone down. That line of questioning was just going to undo the good the movie and the man had done her. She would never see him again. That was the way her life worked, that was its logic.

She walked to the bedroom and began to change for bed. Maybe Volkoff would call tomorrow, and she could begin planning...the fifth job. Or maybe Volkoff had just given her chain a jerk.

* * *

_Dear Old Dog in Newark,_

_I have an old dog myself. I have taught him new tricks. If you know you are on a dead-end road, change direction. Your life isn't over until you give up on it. If habits can be made, they can be broken - that's not just logic, it's life._

_In Certainty,_

_Mrs. Know-It-All_

* * *

A/N2: Thoughts?


	2. Chapter 2

AU novella. An advice columnist happens upon an arresting stranger, resulting in dangerous feelings, confusions, and errors. A romantic dramedy.

* * *

A/N1: Greetings from Vancouver! Our cast increases in size. The plot gets stirred.

Don't own _Chuck. _

* * *

**Chuck vs. Mrs. Know-It-All**

CHAPTER TWO

* * *

Sarah entered the grocery store, facing another task alone, always alone. Shopping for one. Cooking for one. Living for one. Sometimes it felt more like she was doing it all for less than one, for no one, none.

If she stood still, or could not sleep, she could hear her life tick-tocking away, but her clock's hands had fallen from its face and she had no idea what the time of her life was. Her fear was: _too late_.

She pushed her cart through the store, glumly getting items and checking them off her list. Check, check, check.

Lists were a crucial part of her life. Her father had taught her to make them when running cons, and the CIA had strongly reinforced her habit. She was good at lists, at keeping track.

She was standing in front of a crate of avocados, trying to determine which ones were likely too ripe and which too unripe when she heard a woman standing nearby and talking to a woman friend, rather loudly and excitedly. Both women were in fleshy, content middle-age, but both dressed oversized t-shirts and yoga pants, both wearing flip flops the of same fluorescent color as their t-shirts.

"So, Madge, I tell you - she's good. She's funny - and she's right. I just love to read her."

"Who is she again, Dot? You know I only read the tabloids. _Mrs. Brainiac_?"

"No, no, Mrs. _Know-It-All_. I'd love to meet her. She must be an older woman - you know, a woman of the world, like us, sophisticated - and I bet she's been around some. She can really understand women. I mean she answers letters from men too, and the answers are _good_. But you can just tell, she is no man. I suppose she _might _be young - but she's a woman, a _Mrs_., for sure."

Madge stifled a yawn with a hand full of endives. "Well, you say her column is in the _LA Daily News_?"

"That's right, Madge," Dot responded eagerly. "Read it, you'll love it." Smiling, Dot picked up a melon, giving it a squeeze and a then a thump. "Ripe!"

Sarah moved on, her chosen avocados bagged in her cart. She smirked to herself. _An advice columnist._ _Might as well waste time and money on a palm reader - a letter-writing fortune teller, no real help to anyone_. She wheeled her cart toward the front of the store, shaking her head to herself and chuckling under her breath, ready to check out.

She still hadn't heard from Volkoff. So she had not called Carina.

xXx

Morgan and the lawyer were hashing out details and Chuck was having a hard time staying focused. The syndication lawyer was happy with Chuck's sketch of Mrs. Know-It-All. Chuck had shortened the mystery blonde's hair a bit, styled it so that it was wavy, and had put her in a pair of studious-looking glasses to help her look like a Know-It-All. He had to admit, the sketch was good. The picture would likely draw people to the column. But when he saw the sketch, he saw her in the theater, smiling.

He took his notebook out and stealthily flipped the pages to the original sketch. _God, she affects me so. I wish I knew who she was. _After a moment, Chuck shut the notebook.

A woman like that would not be interested in a man like him; he was better off just carrying the trace of her around in his notebook. Face to face, she would have rebuffed him, maybe even laughed at him. And that would have ruined the fantasy. As it was, he did not have her but he did still have the fantasy-and the original sketch to anchor it to. He put the notebook in his shoulder bag and took out his laptop. He had more letters to finish. If he understood the lawyer and Morgan correctly, the sketch would run atop tomorrow's _Daily News_ Column, and the column would start its run in syndication that day too. It would appear in thirty or forty papers nationwide, and could eventually double that number if it fared well.

Chuck was still having a hard time getting excited about any of it. He had not intended to be Mrs. Know-It-All as a career. He still was keeping the fact that he was Mrs. Know-It-All from Ellie. Worst of all, he did not like giving advice very much, anyway not by letter. He tried to do it in a way that, while entertaining, was responsible, but still-what did he, Chuck Bartowski, really know about life, about its realities and costs? True, his life had not given him all he had hoped for from it. True, he had lost his parents while he was young. But still, lots of people had more difficult lives than he did. The syndication deal would mean more money, a lot, and there was interest in him writing a book-but he had never been about money, and the book would be a book by _Mrs. Know-It-All_, not Chuck Bartowski. He sighed to himself. _Why fight it?_ He'd let Morgan take care of it.

xXx

Sarah felt odd. She had come home and turned on her radio, something she never did. Music was something _other people_ played, or department stores, or elevators. She had the radio simply because it had been in the apartment when she moved in. Her dad bought it, she supposed. But she had a strange desire to hear music. She cut up vegetables for a stir fry, dancing along to the song on the radio as she did. She had no idea why she was in such a good mood. The depression of her visit to her father had lifted at the movie theater, the combined work of Laurel and Hardy, and of the curly-haired mystery man she had seen. Her grim moments at the grocery store had passed like a shadow - and normally such moods came to stay. Her mystery man.

She let her thoughts dwell on him for a moment as she danced and stirred. She knew he was far more the cause of her mood than Laurel and Hardy. _Something about the way he looked at her. _It was as if she came to be in his gaze, as if she had been hovering on the margins of reality and then somehow transmigrated across into reality when he looked at her. His eyes..._realized_...her.

She huffed. That was nonsense. Probably. Probably the result of being so much alone. But still...She wished she had been able to see him better, had made lasting, meaningful eye contact with him. _Bad idea, Sarah. You don't need anyone to remember you. No matter where you go, there you aren't._

xXx

Alexei Volkoff was standing in his house, looking out elaborate white French doors, out onto the shimmering blue pool, made bluer by the fiery orange sunset. In the pool, in her swimsuit, was his current girlfriend, Claudia. Like so many of his girlfriends in the past, she looked like she had dived from a swimsuit calendar and into his pool. She was tall and lean. Her hair was the same black as her swimsuit. She bladed through the water effortlessly. Watching her, Alexei expected to feel something - but not something in his chest, something lower down. And he did feel something there, no doubt, but the feeling in his chest was more urgent - and more worrisome.

Claudia was supposed to be this year's model, so to speak. In and out in a few weeks then replaced by someone even more beautiful - and, if all went well, even younger. Volkoff cared about no one, particularly not the women he slept with. That's what he believed. So, what the hell was wrong with him? He was old enough to know better.

xXx

Claudia knew Volkoff was watching her. She also knew his two valets or henchmen or _whatever_, Jeff and Lester, were watching, telescoping her from an upstairs window.

Perverts.

Claudia had taken up with Volkoff with her eyes open. She had intended to take him for a ride-a purely monetary ride. She would be his stare-worthy date at social events, and in return, he would lavish her with clothes and jewelry and money. And so it had gone, until, unexpectedly and regrettably, Claudia had started to feel something for Volkoff. He was ruthless, she knew, although he tried to hide that from her. But he could also be surprising on rare occasions...suddenly kind, tender.

She had begun to feel something for him, and that feeling had tipped the scales when he tried for the umpteenth time to bed her. She finally yielded. She wanted him too. She had been with him for a while. But, despite her feelings, she was beginning to believe she should leave. She believed he had no feelings for her - and she was worried that if he realized she did for him, he would end it. Worse, given what she had seen and heard in the house - and given that Volkoff had to know or suspect what she had seen and heard - she worried that he would do more than end it. She worried he would end _her_. She shuddered despite the heated water of the pool - confused and conflicted and a little afraid. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Volkoff abandon his lookout behind the French doors. She noticed the glint of Jeff and Lester's telescope.

Perverts.

xXx

Lester was not happy.

Well, at the moment, Claudia's svelte body encircled in his telescopic vision, he was happy - with a tumid happiness he would have to tend to later, when alone. Well, alone with one of his socks. But he was unhappy in a larger sense. He - and Jeff too - was not cut out to be a lackey. Lester was cut out to be a player, to one day be the sort of man who could attract and keep a woman like Claudia. But that was never going to happen as things were. He needed to find some way to impress Volkoff, to get real standing for himself-and Jeff too-in Volkoff's organization. He just needed a plan, an advancement plan. He put his mind to it as he refocused the telescope. Claudia was climbing out of the pool.

Dripping.

xXX

Inked.

The papers were signed. All was in order. Chuck had the bonus check in his pocket. He and Morgan were back at his apartment, drinking beers and playing video games to celebrate. Morgan had gotten a little tipsy. Chuck could tell, because Morgan was actually competition as they played an old arcade game. Morgan was one of those rare people who got better at games as he got more drunk. Chuck always loved _Spy Hunter_, the old game they were playing, probably as much for its synthesized version of the Peter Gunn theme song as anything else.

_Dum da da dum, Dum da da dum, daaa duuumm._

Morgan was chuckling to himself, manipulating the controller, flushed with drink and victory. Chuck let him keep playing alone. Chuck got his notebook out and looked at the woman again. The sketch and the memory it unfailingly provoked made his chest ache, filled him with longing too deep and complicated for words.

Sighing, he put it away and opened his laptop. Morgan would play until he fell asleep or passed out, or a little of both. Chuck would work.

* * *

_Dear Mrs. Know-It-All,_

_My boyfriend has secrets. He won't tell me about his past. He is warm and loving and I believe I love him. But can I trust a man I don't know? Can I love a man I don't trust? _

_Please advise,_

_Open and Shut in Orlando_

* * *

Morgan was snoring on the couch, his snores punctuating the _Spy Hunter _song, still playing. Chuck turned off the game and the television. The room filled to bursting with silence. He got a quilt from a closet and draped it around his bearded buddy.

Chuck thought about how he should answer _Open and Shut_. The letter made him feel guilty about his own secret. Why was he reluctant to tell Ellie what he was doing? He was a success-even more so now. He was making good money. Real money. Why not just come clean? Why not tell her?

He got ready for bed without any satisfactory answer to that question. He turned off the lamp and settled beneath the covers. The ceiling of his room seemed suddenly a million miles above him - and, yet, at the same time, he found his room claustrophobic. He took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut and willed sleep to come. Strangely, it did.

xXx

The next morning, after a long session cleaning her guns, sharpening her knives, arranging all her weapons, cataloging ammo, and so on, Sarah dressed to take a run. She tied her running shoes and put on a black ball cap, pulling her long ponytail through the gap in the back. She slipped on a pair of sunglasses and headed out.

Running helped. She hated to admit it, because of a part of her understood why. She was a runner, not just on the outside, running to stay fit, but on the inside, psychologically. She did not want to face herself or her life, so she ran. And ran. And ran. She heard her own footfalls behind her. Someday, someway, for some reason, she knew she would overtake herself-and then: a reckoning. But that day would not be today. She was warmed up and she lengthened her stride, in her mind's eye increasing the distance between herself and herself.

Later, she stopped at a bench in the small park not far from her apartment. It was shady and she often stopped there to go through her cool-down. She stretched a bit, rotating from her torso, when she noticed an elderly man staring at her from one bench down. She is used to leers: but the man's age and facial expression made it hard to believe he was imagining her naked, as happened multiple times any day she left the apartment. She was undressed in men's minds all day long. She hated that, hated the reminder of occasional seduction missions in the CIA, missions where she carefully cultivated men's lust for her so as to manipulate them. They never got what they lusted after, but that did not prevent the debased feeling the missions created in her, the feeling of betraying her own natural capacity for intimacy-a capacity she did not estimate as large anyway.

She thought of the curly-headed man again. His eyes. _Brown. _He had not undressed her with his eyes. There had been nothing of that in his look, nothing - that was part of why she liked him looking at her. He was looking at her..._subjectively._..not objectively. He saw her, regarded a human being and a woman, a locus of subjectivity, of mind and feelings, a person. She had rarely been regarded as a person. Rarely. She had been objectified almost always, seen as a tool for deception (her father), termination (Graham) or gratification (marks or assets) - as a prop, or a weapon or a toy.

The elderly man approached her. He had a newspaper folded neatly in one hand and he was extending the other to her. In spite of herself, Sarah tensed and coiled: she did not do casual conversation, chitchat. _What does he want?_ Eventually, she realized that she was drawing more attention to herself by leaving him standing with his hand out than she would if she shook it, so she did.

He gave her a quick, admiring smile. "You're _her_, aren't you?"

Sarah raised her brows. "Her? Um...I don't...think so."

The man gave her a more intense look, a concentrating, careful look. "No, you are. The glasses are different, but they make you look the same. I understand, though. You don't need fans intruding on your personal time. Let me just say I really, really enjoy your work."

_My work? How could he know? 'Enjoy'? _

Sarah tensed and coiled again. The man gave her a quick, conspiring wink and then turned away. As he left, she noticed him unfold his paper and stop, looking at it. He nodded to himself and went on. Sarah stood there, puzzled, then she headed back to her apartment, an unsettled feeling settling in her stomach.

xXx

As Sarah walked the short distance to her apartment, she noticed that...she was being noticed. Not just by men, and not just by them in their common way. No, she was being _noticed_. Taken to be...someone. Not just gawked at - but identified. ID'd. This was bad. It was really bad. She ducked into her apartment, out of sight. _What the hell is going on?_

xXx

Chuck was unamused. He had finished walking Dud the second time when Morgan had come by with a request.

No, with a requirement.

The syndication folks wanted video footage of Mrs. Know-It-All to run in ads. Morgan had held onto that little piece of information last night, knowing it would create a problem.

"Video? Morgan, she doesn't exist!"

"Yes, she does, Chuck. You didn't just make up that sketch, did you? You sketched someone, right?"

"Yes...but I changed the sketch. Thank goodness the lawyer thought I had just created the drawing. And I didn't ask the woman if I could use her likeness or near-likeness. I just did. I don't know who she is or how to find her, Morgan." _I wish I did._ "How the hell are we supposed to manage _video?_"

Morgan chewed on his lip. "I still have my prom date at home, folded in the closet. A bit...beat up. But she'll hold air for a little while, I think. And she's blonde…" His look became speculative, airy.

"Morgan, that's idiotic. We can't pass off...Oh, geez, just let me think."

Chuck plopped down on the loveseat, angry and confused and trying to think despite both. "Maybe we could find someone who looks like her, at least a little, and then with glasses and maybe a bit of hair styling, we could pass her off as the woman in the sketch. We can always say that any discrepancy is the result of my bad draughtsmanship…"

Morgan pulled himself out of his inflated speculations. He refocused. "See, see...I knew you would come through. But how do we find this _replacement_ woman?"

Chuck shook his head. "Don't know...Wait, we could have a kind of casting call. Put up some signs around see what happens. It is LA, after all. We could get lucky, I guess." Chuck knew there was no chance of finding anyone else who looked like the woman he had sketched. The universe did not duplicate that sort of miracle. But maybe they could find an attractive blonde who would be willing to make a few bucks pretending to be Mrs. Know-It-All. They _were_ in LA with the world's highest per capita number of attractive blondes.

Chuck and Morgan quickly designed a sign for the casting call. There was a downstairs area in Chuck's apartment building; it was free and he reserved it for the next evening. They could do the call there. He and Morgan had no time to waste.

Morgan left with a handful of signs, promising to put them up everywhere he could that night and the next day. Chuck took Dud and a handful of signs and put the signs up all over, walking and walking-on bulletin boards at coffee shops, on light poles, and so on. He mentally crossed his fingers. Having Morgan as his agent was always a best-of-times, worst-of-times proposition.

By the time Chuck finished, Dud was nearly dead. A third walk. Routine ruined. He gave Chuck a cold stare before he went to crash on his bed.

xXx

Claudia was wandering through Volkoff's house. He was out; she was bored. She was also certain that Jeff was stalking her through the house, spy-like. She went into Volkoff's study and sat down at his desk. She saw a newspaper in the trash. Volkoff took the paper but he never actually read it. She was unsure why he paid for it since it always went from his desk into the trash almost immediately. Shrugging absently to herself, she fished it out of the trash and opened it. She turned the pages, then stopped. Her progress was arrested by a sketch of a striking woman. It was atop an advice column, _Ask Mrs. Know-It-All. _She shrugged again and began to read.

She heard Jeff's disappointed sigh in the distance. The open paper and the heavy desk hid her from his sight. Good. Pervert.

She read with growing interest. _Huh. This Mrs. Know-It-All is funny. And smart._

xXx

Sarah was out running again the next day. She took a new route and chosen not to wear her sunglasses. She was still troubled about yesterday and still had no idea what had been going on.

When her run came to an end, she used a new spot to cool down. When she had, she realized that she had a craving for coffee. She had none at the apartment. She forgot to buy it the other day when she went to the store. _Left it off my list. Not like me. _She walked along, enjoying the sunny morning. She got to the coffee shop she had in mind (she rotated coffee shops so that she would never come to be a regular anywhere), and she went inside, joining the line of people waiting to order.

A businessman in an expensive suit was in front of her. He was reading the newspaper on his iPad. He seemed to finish the story he was reading and he scrolled to another section of the paper. As he did, Sarah saw a picture of herself pass by on his screen. _What? _She jolted like someone had delivered her an electric shock.

She saw a stack of papers on the counter. She stepped out of line and grabbed one. She opened it, turning the pages a little too quickly to avoid notice, but unable to fight down her panic. She found the page she had seen on the iPad.

_Oh, my God. It is me! _A sketch of her - her hair slightly different, and wearing glasses, was displayed next to the words: _Ask Mrs. Know-It-All. _

_How was this possible? What if Volkoff sees it, recognizes me? He will recognize me? Will this endanger my dad? Yes, damn it, yes._

Sarah jumped. Someone behind her touched her shoulder lightly. She whirled, poised for attack, to face a smiling teenage girl. The girl pointed toward the open counter, the waiting barista. Sarah was next to order but she had not realized it. She gave the girl an apologetic look and stepped out of line. She needed to get to the bathroom, find a place to get her breathing under control, her mind right, a place to fight back her panic.

She was almost to the bathroom door when she noticed a sign on the bulletin board. _Do You Look Like Mrs. Know-It-All? _The sketch was there too. There was a...casting call?...that night. The address was not that far from where Sarah was standing. Sarah memorized the address. Gritting her teeth, she tore the sign down, balled it up, and shoved it in a trash can.

She was going to have to figure out what was going on.

That sketch had to go away. Go away. By any means necessary.

* * *

_Dear Open and Shut,_

_That sounds excruciating, maddening. But..._

_I suppose you have to ask yourself how much you think his past matters, and whether it is possible to know someone without knowing that person's past. _

_Remember, though, falling in love with someone is not the same as buying a used car. There really is nothing like Carfax for human beings. Our pasts matter, they shape us, but they don't exhaust who we are and they need not determine who we will be. So, my counsel is this (to put it in an original formula), don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Remember, you can't kick the tires on a person. (The law takes a dim view of that.) Try to make the most of all the Open and to bear up under the all the Shut. Maybe one day he will be all Open, 24/7._

_With conviction,_

_Mrs. Know-It-All_

* * *

Claudia finished the Mrs. Know-It-All column, then put the paper down. _I wonder if she can help me, help me figure out what to do about Volkoff and about how I feel? _

She grabbed a sheet of paper from the neat stack of letterhead on the desk corner. She grabbed a pen, looked up at the ceiling for a moment, looked level (shooting a glare at Jeff, standing behind a potted plant in the hallway), and then looked down to the sheet of paper.

"_Dear Mrs. Know-It-All," _she began.

xXx

They were nearly done. No luck. Hours wasted.

Chuck and Morgan were listening to a short, thin red-headed woman explain to them why she would be the best choice as Mrs. Know It All. She seemed to think they wanted her to take over the column, not just to appear in a brief video. She was telling them something Chuck could not quite follow about her vast reading of popular romance novels. She seemed to be claiming to have memorized the complete works of Barbara Cartland.

Chuck completely stopped paying any attention at all.

The blonde woman from the movie theater had just walked into the room. And, in doing so, she sucked all the air out of it - or at least out of Chuck. His chair became a Tilt-A-Whirl. He had the crooked spins.

xXx

Sarah stood in place, deathly still. It was her curly-headed man, her Laurel and Hardy co-watcher. She had found him. Looking for Mrs. Know-It-All, she found _him_.

_Oh, damn. _

_Sweet._

* * *

A/N2: Cue the Peter Gunn theme song. You can hear it and the _Spy Hunter _version on YouTube.

Since I am traveling, I won't post Chapter 3 until next week sometime, assuming there is continued interest. Reactions?


	3. Chapter 3

AU novella. An advice columnist happens upon an arresting stranger, resulting in dangerous feelings, confusions, and errors. A romantic dramedy.

* * *

A/N1: A small present. Chapter Three earlier than forecast. It's a Good Friday/Easter-ish chapter, I realized as I was re-drafting it...although I did not plan it that way. And since I finished it, I decided to share it.

_Nota Bene_: at one point in the chapter, I blend Chuck and Sarah's POVs for what I hope are obvious reasons.

Don't own...well, you know, you know.

* * *

**Chuck vs. Mrs. Know-It-All**

CHAPTER THREE

* * *

Morgan seemed absorbed in the redheaded, Barbara Cartland-reader's story; he had not noticed the blonde woman walk into the room. Chuck, still dazed and dizzy just from seeing her again, got up and walked toward her, unsteady on his feet but moving inerrantly, in a straight line.

She was looking at him with blue eyes more intense than he could remember ever seeing. He could not quite meet her gaze, not reeling as he was. Even out of his chair: _Tilt-a-Whirl_. He made it to her at last. He stopped and forced himself to look into her eyes. She looked back into his.

Chuck had no words for the feeling, no words of his own for his sense that...well, to quote _Dune_: _The sleeper has awakened!_

While Chuck knew he was not the _Kwisatz Haderach - _he still felt magic all around him, the intimate, tremulous caress of fate. It was Her. It was She. Her. She. He lost his hold on grammar: there was only her, she, the woman - and her besieging blue eyes, surrounding him, claiming him. No escape. Only surrender. Honorable surrender.

xXx

Sarah watched the curly-headed man walk toward her. He seemed unsteady - despite his beeline toward her. She felt rooted where she stood, as if, after a life as a species of nomad, she had found her ground, her home, permanent, not temporary. His eyes were the brown of rich earth, with flakes of other colors, green and gold. A promise of growth, harvest. A place to dwell. For the first time she could remember, she felt zero compulsion to run. Rooted.

That was crazy. She was here because somehow her likeness was in every newspaper she saw. She needed to find Mrs. Know-It-All and..._negotiate_...a change in her avatar.

_Why hadn't Mrs. Know-It-All just used her own photo? Was she unattractive, horribly scarred, pencil shy? What? _

The curly-headed man was looking at her much as he had at the theater. She felt at once animated and relaxed, like she had drunk her fill of good wine and was at her ease, her heart's ease. She was fighting an immediate, nearly ungovernable impulse to straighten his slightly askew shirt collar.

_No, Sarah, no. _She stayed her hand, clutched, shifted into reverse, and took a step back from him.

xXx

When the woman stepped back from him, Chuck came to himself. He smiled. "Can I...uh...Can I help you?"

"I hope so," she said, her voice low and soft, complicated. "I need to see Mrs. Know-It-All. I have to talk to her."

Chuck felt his heart fall. She wanted Mrs. Know-It-All, not him. She must have seen the sketch, must be wondering what was going on. Evidently, she did not suspect him of having drawn it - but she would get around to that.

The woman continued. "Is she here?"

"Ah...no," Chuck said, his mouth dashing ahead of his thoughts, "but I am her...personal assistant. I...um...I handle her...business. The day-to-day stuff."

The woman studied him for a second and he felt overmatched again, unable to match her in-the-moment intensity. "Okay, can you call her, or something. Find a way for me to speak to her - face-to-face?"

Chuck did not want to lie but he was already deep in deception. "I can't call her."

"Why not?" The woman seemed to become annoyed.

"She...went out of town...and she forgot her phone. She's a...typical genius type. Really, really absent-minded. All theory, no practice."

The woman looked undecided, then Chuck could feel her preparing to leave. "Um...Do you think you could tell me what you need to talk to her about...Miss..._um_?" He needed her to stay.

xXx

It took Sarah a second to realize he was asking for her name. "...Rebecca. My name is Rebecca." _Well, it was once. _"I want, need, to talk to her about the sketch she is using for her column. The woman sketched looks...a lot like me."

Chuck took the opportunity to look at her more closely. She was more compelling even than he remembered. And in person, there was a quality to her that was clearly beyond the reach of pencil, pen, paint, or photograph. "Now that you mention it, the sketch does look a lot like you." He subtly changed the direction of the conversation. "But I should tell you, the sketch is not a sketch of Mrs. Know-It-All, Rebecca..." Chuck paused; a doubt nettled him. _Rebecca?_ Somehow, 'Rebecca' seemed wrong. The woman was not a Rebecca. But why would she lie?

"Why would she use a sketch of someone else?" Rebecca asked, her brow knitted.

"Well, you see...she is a recluse...very, very, very private. Very."

"You said that. But didn't you also just say she went out of town?"

"Um...yes...yes, I did." Chuck could feel the intensity of the blue gaze growing, and he had not thought that was possible.

Her eyes narrowed as she spoke. "Well? Don't most recluses stay at home, indoors…" _Like me, most of the time. Except when Volkoff sends a text._

"That's...er...that's true," Chuck mumbled, groping. _Like me, most of the time. Except when Dud wants his walks._

"Well…?"

"She went to a recluses' convention!" Chuck offered before considering his words. _Oh, shit._

"She did _what_? She went _where_? Say, that makes no sense….And what is _your _name?"

"Chuck. My name is Chuck." He bore up under her disbelieving look. "No, really. _Chuck_. And, I know that sounds odd but the convention's like...you know, _AA_, but for nearly psychotic introverts. They all sit in a circle-but facing outward. They never use each others' names…Name tags are _verboten..._" Chuck gulped as he finished. That was the single dumbest thing he had ever said.

Annoyance gone, Rebecca's blue eyes flashed and she laughed. "_Verboten, _eh?" She said the word like a native speaker. "That's either true, Chuck, or it is the dumbest thing I have ever heard." She continued to laugh. It was wonderful, that laugh. Yet obviously unused, and that was a loss to the universe, it diminished the space-time continuum. She seemed to smile at her own laughter, as she had smiled at her smile during the movie.

Chuck went on. "I know it _sounds _crazy, but believe me, we are talking about a crazy woman."

"How could a crazy woman end up with a syndicated advice column, Chuck? How is that possible?"

Chuck gave her a long flat look. "Two words: _Dr. Phil._"

She started laughing again and the fact that Chuck had made it happen on purpose made him flush with pleasure.

"Okay, okay. I give you that one. I guess anything _is_ possible. When will she be back?" Sarah had to rein herself in, she was forgetting why she was there, enjoying the conversation with...Chuck.

"Look, we're done here," Chuck added, ignoring the slight irrelevance, feeling Rebbeca about to leave again. "I was going to the noodle place nearby for dinner. Would you, maybe, join me? We could talk about...Laurel and Hardy. In fact, I can be Laurel; you can be Hardy."

She gave him an unreadable look, her face a cipher. She seemed to be talking to herself internally. Chuck waited.

_So you remember me, too? No, I can't have dinner with you, no, but…_

"Mrs. Know-It-All might call," Chuck offered, trying to keep her with him.

"I thought she forgot her phone?"

"Yeah, right. That's what I said. I mean she did. But she sometimes finds a landline and checks in around dinner time. My work is never done."

Something felt off to Sarah, but that feeling was a small voice in the choral swell of _Yes!_ inside her. "Okay, that...that would be fine. I could eat, I guess. And noodles sound good."

Chuck gave her a smile that made her feel like she had never been smiled at before. She rocked in place, almost felled by the charm of his smile. She felt charmed all the way to her feet; her feet felt _warm_.

"Okay, okay, good. Really good. Give me a minute."

She watched Chuck go to the bearded man who was still talking to the red-haired woman. Chuck whispered something to him and he looked up at Sarah for the first time. She saw his eyes get saucer for a second, and then he nodded.

Chuck raked his papers into a shoulder bag, slung it on and bounded toward her, his smile back and somehow more effective. When he got close to her, she reached out and straightened his collar. He nodded _thank you_. She nodded _you're welcome_. Natural. Her hand trailed gently down his shoulder and lingered on his chest before she pulled it back with a monumental act of will.

"This way, Rebecca. Your noodles await." Chuck scrunched his face. "Um...forget I said that, please."

Laughing in spite of herself, Sarah turned and left with Chuck.

xXx

When Volkoff got home, he went looking for Claudia. But she was not in the pool or in the steam room. She was not in the bedroom. He found her seated on the bed in one of the many guest bedrooms, the one furthest from the bedroom they shared. A statement. She looked at him cooly when he appeared in the doorway.

"Stay out, Alexei, please."

"What do you mean, Claudia. I have been looking forward to seeing you all day."

She gave him a frowning smile. "Me, too. But I have some thinking to do about us and I can't do it if we are sharing a bed. I'm going to stay in here until I find some answers."

Volkoff face darkened with anger, but he made calmed himself and smiled tightly. He was not really surprised. There was something happening between them and he was not sure about it either. But he did not see why that should mean she should abandon his bed. He _had _been looking forward to seeing her - and more.

Claudia waited for him to speak. "Alright, Claudia. But just know that I want you in my bed." She gave him a small smile and a single nod. He turned and headed back down the hallway_._ _Women._

xXx

Claudia let out the breath she had not known she was holding. She had done it. Now she just had to figure out what she had done. She was praying Mrs. Know-It-All would answer her letter, tell her what to do, what to think. After she wrote the letter out, longhand, she had typed it and emailed it. She did not want to wait on snail mail. She needed help, fast.

xXx

Lester had overheard the conversation between Volkoff and Claudia. He was hidden in a closet in the hallway. _Interesting. Trouble in Paradise. Maybe I can find a way to turn this to my advantage...Mine and Jeff's. _

Lester moved slightly. Jeff was pressed up against him, behind him, in the closet. "Jeff, I have told you: only one of us in a closet at a time, remember?" Lester turned.

Jeff looked blank for a minute. "But I was here first. You came in after me. That's two _different _times."

Lester rolled his eyes. The sacrifices he made for friendship. "Yes, but even though we entered at different times, we are in here together now…at the _same _time."

Jeff looked lost. Then he smiled a pudgy smile. "Oh, I get it. We should not _overlap _each other in the closet!"

"Please, Jeffrey, please. Never utter that sentence again as long as you live."

Jeff did not understand. He blinked in the dark.

xXx

As Chuck and Sarah took their places at a table in _Soup and Oodles_, Sarah's phone vibrated. Her heart raced. _Volkoff? But he sends texts. _She picked up the phone and looked at the screen. It was Carina.

"Can you give me a moment, Chuck?"

"Sure, Rebecca."

As Sarah quickly walked away, she ground her teeth. '_Rebecca'. _She wanted to hear Chuck say her name, say 'Sarah'. Lying to him made her queasy. She stepped outside. onto the sidewalk. She answered the still-vibrating phone. "Carina, hey!"

"Hey, Sarah! I've been waiting for your call, twiddling my thumbs - but only because I can't seem to get my physical therapist to let me twiddle his."

Sarah shook her head. "Sorry, Carina. I've been a little...preoccupied."

"Hey, those noises...it sounds like you are actually _outside_ of your apartment. Can that be true? I don't recall ever talking to you with street noise in the background before."

Sarah huffed. "I get out. I am out. I will have you know, I am on a date."

Silence.

Silence.

Carina finally spoke: "I must have heard you wrong. Can you spell that last word for me, slowly?"

"D-A-T-E, Carina. Why is that so hard to believe?"

"Two words: _Ice Queen_."

Sarah laughed - not at the content of what Carina said, but at its form. It was the same as what Chuck had said to her earlier.

"You know I hate that name, Carina."

"I do, but if the iceberg fits…"

"I have dated, Carina."

"Well, I'm not saying you're a complete stranger to the concept, Sarah, but I am not sure I have ever really known you to...um..._embody_ it."

"Sometimes, Carina…."

"I know, I am so much fun you can't bear it." Laughter. "So tell me all about this d-a-t-e," Carina implored in a secretive voice, sounding for all the world like a high school kid wanting to hear about her best friend's new crush.

"Not much to tell. He's tall."

"Wow, thanks for nothing, Sarah. Has anyone ever told you that your descriptive vocabulary is a little _fact-oriented_?"

"Well, he is...tall, I mean. Very tall. And his hair...it's..._curly._"

"_Ooh_. That's better. I like the way you said that last word, rolling your tongue around it. Imagining your hands in that hair already, I can hear it."

Sarah blushed. That was exactly what she had been doing. _Damn. _"Look, I need to get back to him...I mean I need to get back inside. I promise, I will call and we will get together, you can visit, just as soon as I can manage it."

"Okay, Sarah. Have a good time. I've heard that curls feel softest against the inner thigh…"

Sarah was not normally affected by Carina's bawdy talk, but that line...moved her. "Thanks for that. Now it will be in my head all through dinner."

"'Head', Sarah, _that's_ the operative word."

Sarah ended the call but she could hear Carina's wicked giggling as the connection broke. Sarah fanned her face and took a deep breath. She went back inside and sat down. She gave Chuck a quick smile. Then she took a long drink from the glass of ice water at her seat. Chuck seemed curious but said nothing.

xXx

Sarah forgot why they were there.

She just forgot.

Forgot.

She got caught up in talking to Chuck, caught up in Chuck. He made her forget herself. She liked him. Really, she liked him. She really liked him. Somehow he was more than she imagined when she had only the memory of him at the movie - and she had imagined him as...well, _a lot_. But he was a man of a sort she had not been around before. He welcomed her talk. He listened, heard her. He told no self-promoting stories. He was funny and, miracle or miracles, he seemed to find her funny too. Very funny. They teased each other and chatted about old movies. He knew tons about film.

He seemed to know tons about everything. There was nothing showy in it; he was no Mr. Know-It-All. He just talked with genuine enthusiasm and understanding and in relevant detail about so many things. His eyes never left hers. Neither of them shared anything personal, particularly Sarah, but she felt like she was getting to know Chuck.

He was in one sense easy to know. Talkative and open. But in another sense, he was hard to know. There was so much to him, so much he had thought and felt and considered. Carina's term, 'iceberg', came back to Sarah, but in application to Chuck, not herself. What she was seeing and hearing was the tip of the iceberg. She felt like she could learn about Chuck and keep learning and that there would always be more to know. Inexhaustibly more.

Most people she felt like she knew in moments. Her dad had taught her to read people, told her they were open books. She had learned her dad's lesson. But she realized that the lesson implied that people contained only two pages, the ones visible at the opening. And that did seem true of most people - at least of the people she had known as a con and as a spy - the cons, the spies and the marks alike. Chuck was an open book - but he contained chapter after chapter, pages and pages, so much that she did not now see, could not now read. _I want to turn his pages. _

xXx

Chuck was flummoxed. He was having the best time. Rebecca seemed to be doing so too. She was fascinating. The little pauses before she spoke. Her hesitancy choosing her words, but the inevitable happiness of her choices. Her insight into the Laurel and Hardy movie, her surprising love of comedy, seemingly surprising even to her, as if she had never been given a chance to think or talk about the topic: he had never spent time with anyone like her. She did not say that much but each word stabbed, had heft and point. And he had never had anyone listen to him like she did, pay him such undivided attention. Her focus was almost frightening, an aspect of her earlier intensity.

He had no illusion about learning much about her, in the sense of facts of record. But he felt like _she_ was there, at the table, completely present with him. With Jill, he had always felt like a part of her was absent or somewhere else. (Maybe even then she had been secretly longing for Bryce?) She was only partly with him, already eyeing the exit, physical or metaphorical. He got no comparable feeling from Rebecca - not at all. Not that he thought she was _with_ him in any, you know, serious sense, but she was with him there, at the table as Jill had never been with him at a table. Or on a date.

Not that this was a date. _No, Chuck. Don't delude yourself. _He had asked her to come to dinner and she said _yes_, but that was so she could perhaps get a chance to talk to Mrs. Know-It-All or to set up a visit with her. She did not seem interested in that at the moment, but he could not afford to let himself get confused about her motives. He would stick to the stated ones and not start imagining others, despite how desperate he was to believe that she really did like him, that he affected her as she affected him. _She kills me._

xXx

"So, Chuck," Sarah said, trying to get herself finally to focus on her ostensible reason for being with him, "do you think we will hear from Mrs. Know-It-All?"

Chuck looked at his watch and back at her. "I doubt it," he said, frowning and shrugging. "She goes to bed early since she gets up really early. She might call, but the window is closing. I guess I should get the check?"

Sarah nodded, swallowing the reluctance she felt to do so. It would not be a good idea to let the evening go on much longer; Carina's teasing was still affecting her, and had been affecting her, at least a little, all through the meal. It had not captured her attention or distracted her from anything Chuck said or she said. It was a constant delicate thrum through her body, a constant subtle rhythm. She could tell that Chuck was feeling something similar. If she ended up in a private spot with him, she was unsure of what she might do. She had fixed his collar-who knows what else she might find herself doing, asking him to do. _Say goodbye and go home, Sarah. _

"Yes, guess so. I really do need to talk to her, to Mrs. Know-It-All. She needs to stop using that sketch of me. How did she get it? Do you have any idea?"

Chuck glanced away and she saw his ears redden. "Chuck, are you by any chance good with a sketch pencil?"

He dropped his head. "Ah...yeah, yeah, I am. Guilty as almost charged." She saw the hesitation in his eyes. "I sketched you that night in the theater."

Sarah knew she should be upset-both that he had done what he had done and that he had not earlier told her he had done it. But she was not upset. She was...pleased and gratified. She was gratified to know that she had affected him so deeply, moved him to sketch her. That their encounter meant something to him too; he did not just remember it. "So, Mrs. Know-It-All used your sketch?"

Chuck nodded. "I changed it up, tried to make it look less like you, but I don't think I can draw you without..._you know_…"

She grinned and left him hanging for a second. "No, Chuck, what?"

"Without drawing _you_. I don't think I could...ever betray...your image."

Sarah swooned inside. She wanted to lean across the table and kiss him soundly, repeatedly. That was the single nicest thing, the single most gracious compliment, she had ever been given - it was not even close.

"That was _sweet_, Chuck." Sarah regretted the 'sweet' as soon as she served it up. Chuck shrank a little from it.

"Sweet?" He tried to joke it off but she could tell it bothered him. She did not know how to tell him that that small word was big for her, one she could never remember applying to another person. He studied his shoes and then glanced back up, wearing a self-mocking smile. "Now I feel like I'm eight. Still, the bright boy with a pencil."

She could see that she had accidentally hit a vulnerable spot. "I'm sorry, Chuck. I meant that in a good...in the _best_ possible way."

He looked at her for a minute, then brightened. "Sorry, a little sensitive. Grade school. We never entirely come in from recess, do we?" He shook himself gently. "So, I am sorry about the picture, but I don't think I can get Mrs. Know-It-All to stop using it. I mean you could, well sue her or something, but it's out there now and it would be hard to walk it back. Her syndication deal specifies that it be used." _And that we supply video, too, thank you, Morgan. _

"Well, I _need_ to talk to her. I can be very persuasive." She laser-focused her gaze.

Chuck shuddered and grinned. "I can imagine."

They sat for a moment, neither quite sure what to say next. Chuck waved at the waiter, who nodded. Sarah did not want to go. She did not want to finish the date. But she had to. She had to. She could see that Chuck was trying to come up with a plan for extending the evening. She needed to go before he came up with one: she would agree to it if he did.

"Sorry, Chuck, but I need to get going. I had...some other plans tonight."

She saw the disappointment in his eyes and felt hers in the pit of her stomach. But that she could not stay with him was proven by how much she wanted to stay with him. She started to stand, but Chuck reached over and put his hand on hers. Gently. She looked down at his hand on hers - the touch of his hand on hers somehow spread until he was touching all of her. She felt herself tremble, get goosebumps. She thought he must have felt the tremble in her hand, saw the goosebumps.

"Look, Rebecca, I am supposed to meet with Mrs. Know-It-All tomorrow. I will see if she will meet with you. If you...give me your number, I can call you."

Chuck's hopefulness was like a third person at the table, a living three-dimensional presence. She needed to say _no_. She could find some other path to Mrs. Know-It-All, one that did not require her to spend more time with Chuck. She needed to say _no_.

"Okay," she said. She held out her empty hand. Chuck unlocked his phone and gave it to her. She went to Contacts. The waiter brought the check and Chuck took it and began to sign it. Sarah thumbed through his contacts. There were virtually none. All male names. Except one. _Ellie_. No last name. Sarah looked at the number and committed it to memory. She committed Chuck's number to memory. She then put in the number of the burner phone she kept at home. She entered the name 'Rebecca' over the number. She handed Chuck's phone back to him. The waiter and the check were gone. "Did you pay for us both?"

Chuck shrugged. "I recently came into some money. Mrs. Know-It-All's syndication bumped my pay. It was my pleasure. This was...This was...amazing."

"I enjoyed it, Chuck, thanks." She leaned in and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. He smelled good. Sweet. Good. Every fiber of her wanted to let her lips linger, but she pulled back. She turned and walked out of the restaurant without turning around. No need to encourage his hopes. Dinner was wonderful but _he_ was not for her - because _she_ could not be for him. She would not be the shade on his sunflower.

And he still believed she was _Rebecca_. That was how he would remember her. The name he would think of if he thought of her. It was the longest, hardest walk of her life.

xXx

Sarah returned to her apartment. She locked her door and stood there, her hand on the lock. She felt strange, completely strange. She had been marking time for so long - with her dad, with the Company, back with her dad, and now in servitude to Volkoff. Tick-tock. She had been marking time, marking terminations, until she was free of Volkoff. _Free_. Her problem was that she had only a sense of what she would be free _from doing_. She had no sense of what she would be _free to do. _She had only pictured Volkoff gone, her life as an assassin finally finished. But she had no sense of what might replace that life, how she might live apart from what she had known. Meeting Chuck made her want to be free from doing what she had done and free to do something new, _to have him_...to have a person like him...in her life.

_That's not possible. Is it? No man like that would have me. Maybe, in a few years, if I can distance myself from what I have been, maybe I could find him again...someone like him...find a different life, a different kind of life._

She put her forehead against the door. She had never tried to populate the days of her future before, really, to imagine what her future might be. She had just wanted to be free. Now, after one bowl of noodles with Chuck, she wanted more than to be free. She wanted to be free - free to live.

It was not too late, but the heaviness in her chest made her feel exhausted. She took off her clothes and put on pajamas. She climbed into her bed. Her feet, warm from the moment she saw Chuck and warmer still when he touched her, had chilled on her taxi ride home.

She knew she would almost certainly never see him again. But his hopefulness had given her hope. She would not forget him. She would not forget the charm of his smile or his scent - sweet, good - the way she imagined home would smell if she had one.

Tomorrow, she would locate Mrs. Know-It-All. She would do it without involving Chuck. Maybe this Ellie was Mrs. Know-It-All. Sarah would convince her to remove the photo. Sarah could only hope that Volkoff had not seen it. She had to keep her dad safe, save him. She had to do the one last job for Volkoff. Then she would be free.

_And then…and then…?_

And then she fell asleep before she completed the thought.

xXx

Chuck had no more than gotten inside his apartment and said hello to a sleepy, grumbling Dud when Morgan called.

"Hey, Morgan," Chuck answered, trying to keep the defeat he was feeling from stealing into his voice, "what's up?"

"So, how was dinner with the sketch-y lady? I've been dying over here. I mean she just walked in, right? See-casting calls in LA, man. Anything can happen. So, is she an actress? Tell me she's not an actress. That woman I was talking to, the Barbara Cartland fan, _she's _an actress."

"You sure got caught up in conversation with her, Morgan."

"Yeah...well, she was a little odd, but cute and nice and, let's face it, Chuck, I haven't dated in...a while."

"Finally admitting that latex doesn't count, Morgan? So you two are going out?"

Chuck could hear Morgan exhale. "Maybe. She did give me her number after you two left. So, what about you? Dinner, right? Did you get some digits?"

"Dinner was...really good, Morgan. And, yes, I got her number - Rebecca's number," the name still seemed wrong to Chuck, "but I don't think she is interested in anything. I don't know if I will see her again. Socially, anyway. I guess I doubt it. She didn't...really...encourage the thought."

Chuck realized his tone had begun to sound defeated and that Morgan had picked up on it. Morgan now sounded concerned. "Hey, Chuck, you never know. Maybe that sketch is a kind of magic link between you. Maybe it will bring her back somehow."

"Morgan, man, I love you, I do, but you have got to stop watching the Disney channel as if it were a documentary channel. But I shouldn't be down - I had a wonderful dinner with a smart, funny, beautiful woman."

"Well, I hate to bring this up, but we still don't have anyone to shoot in the video the syndication folks want, Chuck."

"I know. Are you off tomorrow, Morgan?"

"Yes, all day. Unless my clients need me."

"_Client_, Morgan - singular."

"Yeah, right. Why do you ask?"

"Because it just occurred to me - maybe we can get Ellie to help us. A wig, some glasses…"

"But then you'd have to tell her, Chuck, like you should have a long time ago."

"I know, I know. I need to tell her. I have no good reason for not telling her, and, tonight, tonight I want to be done with lies and secrets, Morgan. So, I think I will tell Ellie tomorrow. And then ask her to help."

"Okay, so, if she says _yes_, where should we take the video?"

"Let's do it at the Zoo, Morgan; Ellie likes it there. Can you come up with a wig and glasses?"

"Already have them."

"Please don't explain that to me, Morgan. So, tomorrow, say, 1 pm? We'll be near the lions."

"Lions. Gotcha. Night, Chuck."

"Night, Morgan."

xXx

Chuck was too keyed up to go to bed. He sent Ellie a text about meeting at the Zoo. As he expected, she was eager to do it, eager to see him. She agreed to meet him there.

He wondered if there was any point in calling Rebecca. He did not want to have to drag Ellie into all he had done, and he had no real Mrs. Know-It-All for Rebecca to talk to, so maybe the best thing was just to let it go. Let her go. Give up. Give her up.

Or...he could wait a few days and then call her perhaps, gauge her reaction, and maybe ask her out. He could do that but he probably would not. Still, the thought of not seeing her again made him ache all over. He could still feel her soft lips on his cheek, her laugh, her smile, her eyes.

He sat down at his computer. A batch of new letters had arrived for Mrs. Know-It-All. Chuck started glancing through them, trying to make initial decisions about which ones to answer. He slowed when he got to one in particular. He read it. He read it again.

* * *

_Dear Mrs. Know-It-All,_

_I am not writing to get a letter in the newspaper. I just need your help. I met someone and have been with him for a while. It was supposed to be a fling, I guess, but it has become something real for me. The man I love treats it like a fling. He has never said he loves me - and I don't know if he can say the words, or really feel the feeling. The longer I stay, the more difficult my situation gets. I don't want to just give up. What should I do?_

_I'm counting on you, Mrs. Know-It-All. _

_Thank you,_

_From Russia with Love? _

* * *

The letter touched him. It affected him. He knew it had to do with Rebecca and dinner and...well, he knew that much.

"_I don't want to just give up." No, not me either, From Russia…_

Chuck decided that he would call Rebecca. He would see Ellie and tell the truth. He thought Ellie would help him with his Mrs. Know-It-All problem too. Ellie was great that way. She came through. Then he would call Rebecca and ask her out. He was not going to just give up. He had waved the white flag at Jill and Bryce. Frankly, a white flag had been the flag on his flagpole for most of his life. He had waved it at life. Maybe it was time to start fighting for what he wanted.

He started an answer to _From Russia_, checking the time. If he got the reply done quickly, he could insert it into tomorrow's column.

* * *

A/N2: Let me know if you want more. As I said at the beginning, the story is written. I am only puttering with the writing now. Comments?

This chapter is for my friend, WvonB.


	4. Chapter 4

AU novella. An advice columnist happens upon an arresting stranger, resulting in dangerous feelings, confusions, and errors. A romantic dramedy.

* * *

A/N1: Almost our whole cast is assembled. The characters are in motion. One more chapter to get everyone on his or her spot, and then...

Don't own _Chuck. _

* * *

**Chuck vs. Mrs. Know-It-All**

CHAPTER FOUR

* * *

_Dear From Russia with Love?,_

_I hear you. Love is hard. It can survive unrequited, but then it is beggarly - and that is not its natural state. In its natural state, love is the deepest form of interchange between two people. _

_You say the man you love can't say the words. The words are hard to say, don't forget that. In fact, if saying them (especially the first time) is easy, they probably aren't meant. They are best said when they simply demand to be said - when you cannot help yourself despite knowing that you are risking yourself. He can love you without saying it, true. But saying it is a part of feeling it. Be patient, if you can. But you are not wrong to want the words - they are an act of love, not a mere report of its existence._

_Sorry if this is a tad abstract - but it will be concrete in your life._

_Good luck. Don't just give up. I find your refusal to give up personally encouraging._

_Pretty sure of It,_

_Mrs. Know-It-All_

* * *

Ellie Woodcomb put down the phone. Chuck texted her to meet him at the Zoo. He knew her schedule. He always kept things like that-everything, really-in his head. He was amazing that way. As smart as Ellie knew herself to be, she knew the gap between herself and Chuck. And that was why she could not understand him. Unlimited potential channeled into insurance charts, graphs, and actuarial life tables. Chuck lived like the miscegenation of a bookworm and a hermit crab. _I am pretty clever myself. _

She could not understand him. Yes, he had suffered, as she had, when her parents had died. And, yes, he had suffered, as she had, living with their grandmother and her inattention. And, yes, he had suffered, as she had not, not really anyway, in love. _That waste of space, Jill Roberts_. Still, given all of that, her brother's strange daily sleepwalking was hard to figure. Why did he not wake up, see himself for who he was, take his life and start leading it, not just following it around, the way Dud followed Chuck around the neighborhood?

Ellie had told Chuck she would meet him. He did not often initiate meetings; she wondered what was going on. But since she had not heard his voice, she had no indication of whether there might be something important going on. She would have to wait and see. She loved the Zoo and she loved her brother. It would be a nice outing. It was too bad Devon had a shift at the hospital. Like Chuck and Ellie, he loved the lions.

xXx

Claudia woke up. Then she jumped up. She wrapped her robe around her short, silken nightie and slipped on her pink slippers. She made her way downstairs to the front door. She was never up so early. The sight of the sun rising shocked her a bit - over the years, she had gotten used to it setting, but not rising. She blinked at it and opened the front door.

It was there! The paper!

She knew better than to expect an answer from Mrs. Know-It-All so soon, but she wanted to see the column anyway. She liked it. It made her feel better about the world and the people in it, added a warm spice to the blandness of long days in an empty mansion. She took the paper inside and walked to the kitchen.

The maid had coffee ready but was not there. Claudia poured a cup and then sat down at the long granite counter. She opened the paper to the column. There was the beautiful face of Mrs. Know-It-All. Claudia wished she could meet her. And then she looked at the column. At the top, the very first letter responded to, was Claudia's emailed letter from the day before.

She was so stunned that it took her a minute to even read her letter over or to read the response. She finally did both. She looked up from the paper, her lovely face in a bewildered scrunch. She was not entirely sure she understood what Mrs. Know-It-All meant. The answer _was_ a tad abstract. But, sitting there for a while, pondering, Claudia thought she could see the point. And she had really waited long enough. She needed Volkoff to say the words.

Claudia sipped her coffee and read the response again. She grabbed a pair of kitchen shears from a drawer and she cut the column out of the newspaper. In her hurry not to cut off any part of her own letter, she also cut the sketch of Mrs. Know-It-All out. All that was left of the column in the paper was the title: _Ask Mrs. Know-It-All. _Claudia folded the column and put it in the pocket of her robe. Then she went upstairs, taking her coffee with her, formulating her plan.

xXx

When Claudia left the kitchen, Lester slinked in, with Jeff slinking right behind him, mirroring him, almost fitted to him, synchronized slinkers. Lester stopped when he saw the still-open paper. Jeff crashed into him and they went down in a heap. Cat-like, Lester jumped up, shooting a death glare at Jeff, who was rubbing his knee and looking befuddled.

Lester grabbed the open page of the paper and held it up, the long, rectangular section missing. As Lester looked at the title, Jeff rose and poked his face into the rectangle, whirling his eyes and smiling madly: "_Heeeeree's Jeff_!"

When Lester rolled his eyes, Jeff tried again, still staring crazily through the rectangular hole. "All work and no play makes Jeff a dull boy. All work and no play..." No response. "_Redrum_? Anybody? Anybody?"

Lester closed the paper on Jeff's face and took out his phone. He got on the paper's website and found the column. He saw the sketch of the beautiful woman, but he paid no attention to it, small as it was on his phone screen. Instead, he immediately attended to the first letter and the name of the letter-writer: _From Russia with Love?! _The name and Claudia's deep interest made it all clear to Lester. She had written the letter. Lester read the response. _Highfalutin' Hallmark Channel Nonsense! What romantic drivel!_ Sneering, he put his phone away. He was sure he had something now, something he could use to mount the ladder of ascension in Volkoff's organization. Jeff too. Lester just needed to find the right moment. The timing was everything.

xXx

Volkoff stretched his legs out under the wrought-iron table. He was finishing a very late lunch by the pool. Jeff and Lester were each on a chaise lounge nearby. They had eaten inside earlier and then come out to wait for orders from Volkoff. It was laundry day, so they were sure what the orders would be, but they liked soaking in the sun. It helped that Claudia was in the pool, doing laps. Volkoff sat back and watched her split the water, enjoying the power of her long legs. He was not happy about her being in the distant guest bedroom. He needed to do something about it.

She finished and climbed out of the pool, dripping water. She grabbed her long hair and twisted water from it. Then she walked to her chaise lounge and grabbed the large towel folded on it She wrapped it around herself. Volkoff watched her as she stood for a moment, facing away from him. He noticed her square her shoulders and then she turned, walking, no, marching, toward him. He had an immediate sinking feeling.

"Alexei," she said, her face grave and purposeful, "I love you. Do you love me?"

Volkoff's heart jammed itself into his throat.

_What? I am Alexei Volkoff. I can have any woman I want. I do not fall in love. Mobsters do not fall in love, especially Russian mobsters. We don't even smile. _

Despite his internal denials, Volkoff realized his heart was in his throat for a reason. He believed he loved her. And seeing her standing there, still dripping, her calves and bare feet in view below the towel, her lovely face, intent and questioning, above it, he knew he loved her.

He wanted to say the words - he could not quite believe it, but he did. He could not get his mouth to work. He could not say something like that in front of Jeff and Lester. He could not allow them to see that sort of weakness, that sort of vulnerability.

Claudia's face was beginning to turn red. Her expression was re-assembling itself, like a slowly rotating kaleidoscope, into an expression of rage.

"Alexei, I can't love a man who doesn't love me back! I have waited on you long enough. Tell me you love me - or lose me!"

Alexei looked at her, looked at Jeff and Lester, both staring wide-eyed at the scene, listening closely and he...crumpled. He said nothing. Claudia gave him a cold-eyed glare, her ultimatum was ineffective. "I am leaving you, Alexei." She walked away.

Alexei wanted to follow her but that would look pathetic. So, he sat there, staring at the wet puddle on the cement where Claudia had been standing. Traces of her. Minutes passed. Then, Volkoff noted Lester had sidled up next to him, waiting. Alexei looked up at him, a question.

"Say, boss, I think I know who caused all that. The responsible party."

"Huh? What? Explain yourself, Lester."

"Claudia wrote to an advice columnist, a 'Mrs. Know-It-All'." Lester made sneering air-quotes. "She told Claudia to leave you." Lester knew that was not the exact truth, but this was his moment, his and Jeff's, although Jeff had no idea.

"I could take care of her for you, boss. Or, Jeff and I could. We'll kill her for you if you'd like." Jeff made a coughing sound. From a distance inside the house, they heard the front door slam. A few seconds later, the roar of an engine and the squeal of tires.

Lester rejoiced. His timing - and Claudia's - could not have been better.

Volkoff smiled a death's head smile, grim and angry and resolved. "Oh, I _would_ like." Volkoff gazed into the distance, his face hardening. "But I want this to be special, no mistakes. I think it needs a _professional_ touch. Besides, you know how I feel about terminating a woman, Lester. It should only be done by a woman. I'm a girl-on-girl sort of guy."

Grabbing his phone, Alexei looked into Lester's downcast face but ignoring the expression. "Tell me that name again."

"Mrs. Know-It-All."

"Well, I think it is time that our pet assassin performed her final trick, don't you? She can teach Mrs. Know-It-All to play dead." Alexei sent a text to Walker.

**Final job now due. Details dropped later, as usual.**

xXx

Lester was pissed.

Alexei had simply written 'Kill Mrs. Know-It-All, advice columnist' on a piece of paper, put it in a manilla envelope, and given the envelope to Lester to take to the drop location. The drop was at a Christian Science Reading Room. Lester was to tape the envelope to the bottom of a table in a dark corner of the room. It was the drop they had used for the four previous hits.

Lester taped the envelope in place after making sure no one could see him. He walked into a lighter part of the large-ish room and had a thought. He pulled out his phone and looked up Mrs. Know-It-All's column again. He moved his face closer to the screen. He finally looked at the sketch. He blinked and shook his head. He looked again, repeating the sequence of actions. He used his thumb and forefinger to enlarge the sketch. He blinked and shook his head yet again. And then he smiled. The smile grew.

Things had just gotten complicated - in a good way. _This is not over. Not by a long shot. _

He left the reading room practically skipping up the sidewalk, his mind spinning. He had the beginnings of a plan.

xXx

Chuck was standing near the lion exhibit at the Zoo. Morgan had taken a position behind a tree after giving Chuck a paper bag containing a blonde wig and a pair of Plano glasses. From the tree, he showed Chuck his phone, pantomiming a gesture of filming with it. Morgan was deathly afraid of Ellie and avoided contact with her as much as he could. He had followed her around, lovestruck, moony, for years, and had..._overtaxed_...her patience. (There had been that time when she found him...sorting...her laundry….lingering over her delicates.) Even though he was no longer lovestruck, she had not found any renewed patience for him.

Chuck knew that she also blamed Morgan, in part, for Chuck's failure to live up to his potential. That was unfair to Morgan-and he had explained that to Ellie. But he knew how his relationship with Morgan probably looked from the outside - as if each encouraged the other to new feats of mediocrity. One of the few advantages of coming clean to Ellie would be that he could at least tell her about Morgan's good work as his agent. Maybe Ellie would relent - at least a little.

Chuck looked up, breaking contact with his thoughts, and saw Ellie walking toward him. She waved and smiled and he did the same.

xXx

Sarah was walking in the crowd about forty feet behind Ellie. She was careful to stay behind a large man and his wife so that she was obscured from view should Ellie suddenly turn.

Sarah had gotten up early and had called in a favor from a CIA analyst who had worked with her a couple of different times during Sarah's years in the CIA. The woman, now nearing retirement age, had always been very good at her job. One of Sarah's missions involved a nephew of the woman's, and Sarah had been able, after some effort, to clear his name; there had been a mistake. The woman had promised Sarah help if the time came when she needed it.

Sarah loathed to call in the favor. But her worry that the sketch of Mrs. Know-It-All might get back to Volkoff had forced her hand. She needed to find Mrs. Know-It-All. She needed to avoid seeing Chuck again. She simply did not trust herself around him. And, oddly, she knew that was because she trusted him. _Jesus, Sarah, how screwed up can you be? _She had given the woman Ellie's phone number and the woman had given Sarah a complete name, Ellie Woodcomb, and an address. The woman said she could get more, but Sarah did not think she needed more. She was not looking for leverage over the woman; they just needed to talk; the sketch needed to go away.

Sarah got her car from the garage beneath the apartment building (she rarely drove these days, since selling her Porsche and buying a nearly wholly unnoteworthy black Camry - her work car) and headed toward Ellie's address.

She was wearing running clothes. When she got to the address, she parked a distance away and took a run that led her through the apartment complex. She saw a woman in the apartment window. Sarah did not get a good look at her, but she assumed it was Ellie Woodcomb. The woman seemed to be preparing to go out.

Sarah got back to her car and settled in to wait. She did not want to force her way into the house or draw attention by knocking. It would be best if she could talk to her in some sparsely populated but public place. The point was not to frighten her but just to get her to agree to remove the sketch.

At around noon, the woman, Ellie, left the apartment. As she walked to her car, Sarah got a good look at her. She struck Sarah as familiar-something about her coloring, the way she held herself. But Ellie got in the car and Sarah did not get a chance to reflect on the familiarity.

Sarah had trailed Ellie to the Zoo. It had taken a while to park and then they had waited in line, Sarah several people behind Ellie, to get a ticket and get inside. Ellie never turned to face Sarah during that time; Ellie was reading something on her phone. Eventually, they got into the Zoo. Sarah had almost lost Ellie then, since Ellie got inside several minutes before Sarah. Luckily, Ellie had stopped to buy a couple of bottles of water at a concession stand near the entrance and so Sarah found her there.

It became clear that Ellie was at the Zoo to meet someone. Ellie looked around, but for the most part, she kept focused ahead. She seemed to have a particular destination in mind. Chuck had said something about possibly meeting her…

_Wait! _And then Sarah panicked. Chuck had told her that Mrs. Know-It-All was a recluse. The attractive brunette Sarah was following showed no signs of being reclusive. Sarah had forgotten that, simply forgotten. She did not forget such things, mission-relevant details. She needed to get her head back in the game. Ellie was no recluse. So, either Chuck had been lying or Ellie was not Mrs. Know-It-All. Chuck, lying?

Sarah was sorting all this out when she saw Ellie's head lift, her walk become more purposeful, targeted. Sarah followed the line created by Ellie's head and shoulders and by her path, and she saw...Chuck. Ellie waved. Chuck waved back. The waves seemed more than just friendly. Sarah felt a sudden chill, then sudden anger. She stepped to the side, behind a vendor's cart, a weenie wagon, watching intently.

Ellie strode to Chuck and threw her arms around him, a water bottle in each hand, hugging him mightily. Chuck returned the hug, closing his eyes. The emotion of the embrace hit Sarah like a bucket of ice water. _Chuck had someone_. He had not said, not indicated, that he did. He had, if anything, indicated that he did not. Anger. Sarah stepped from behind the weenie wagon. Without considering what she was doing, Sarah autopiloted straight to Chuck and Ellie.

As she got to them, Chuck opened his eyes. Sarah expected to see shock and embarrassment. She saw shock-but no embarrassment. Instead, she saw...excitement. Joy.

"Rebecca!" Chuck unwound his arms from Elle and stepped around her to Sarah. He reached out and cupped her elbows, leaning in to give her a version of the kiss she had given him the night before. Sarah felt dizzy, lost and incredibly...happy. Maybe Ellie was Mrs. Know-It-All; at that moment, Sarah did not care. But Ellie was not Chuck's...girlfriend...Chuck was not involved with Ellie romantically. That now seemed certain to Sarah.

Ellie turned to look at Sarah, smiling when she saw Chuck holding her as he was. The smile did it: Sarah knew: Ellie was Chuck's _sister_. Their features were different, but their coloring was very much the same, hair and eyes. And their expressions, their smiles, bore an unmistakable family resemblance, especially when Sarah could see them smiling pairwise.

"Hi..._Rebecca _is it? I'm Ellie, Chuck's sister." Ellie started to hold out her hand but then realized she was still holding a water bottle in each hand. Chuck turned and took them, putting them in a paper bag nearby. He quickly, quietly rolled the top of the bag down before he stood back up.

Sarah took Ellie's offered hand and shook it, smiling at the brunette. "I'm...Rebecca. I met Chuck last night. Well, in a way, we met before that, but we did not talk until last night."

"What brought you two together?" Ellie seemed delighted by this turn of events. She was beaming, curious.

Sarah saw a look pass over Chuck's face and he jumped in with an answer, even though Ellie had been addressing Sarah. "Rebecca and I...met...at the Laurel and Hardy Film Festival." Ellie looked at Chuck. He shrugged happily, nodding.

She looked back to Sarah. "Really, you are a Laurel and Hardy person, Rebecca?" Ellie's tone suggested mild disbelief.

"Actually, yes. I grew up...on the road. I watched a lot of late night television in motel rooms. I guess I developed a soft spot for those old comedies."

Ellie smiled at her, and then gave Chuck an unmistakable _Don't Mess This Up!_ look. "That's terrific. Say, did you two plan to meet here? Am I interrupting? Third-wheeling?"

Chuck answered. "No, Ellie, it's just...serendipity. I had hoped to see Rebecca again," he gave Sarah a shy smile, "but I hadn't had a chance to call to...you know, ask her."

Sarah heard the sincerity in Chuck's comment and it thrilled her. He had not just given up on her, on seeing her again. She had wanted him to - and hoped he would not. She feared her walk away from him had worked; she was delighted it failed.

"Actually," Sarah said, "I suspect I am the one intruding. You two were clearly expecting to find each other here, weren't you?"

"Yes, we were. Chuck asked me to meet him." Ellie gave Sarah a significant glance. "I think I know why. He had _news_." Ellie's eyes pinned that final word to Sarah.

Chuck colored deeply red but said nothing. Sarah could not keep from laughing at his blush and the whole backward situation - even more backward than Chuck or Ellie could know.

Sarah noticed Chuck steal a glance toward a stand of trees a short distance away. She followed his glance but saw nothing, no one. When she returned her eyes to him, he seemed nervous. "Well, Ellie," he said, talking a tick too fast, "I guess there's no real reason for us to talk. You've met the biggest news item in my life."

Sarah narrowed her eyes a little and looked more closely at Chuck. He was nervous. He seemed distracted. It was true that he had not expected to see her, but she was not sure that was the explanation.

Ellie looked at Chuck and then at Sarah. "Tell you two what. I think this meeting more of that..._serendipity_. I'm going to take a walk around, take in the animals and the sunshine, and then head home." Sarah started to protest, but Ellie put up her hands. "No, really, not a problem, Rebecca. If you only knew...No, not a problem. I love the Zoo. This won't be a wasted trip. Well, it already is a long, long way from a wasted trip." Ellie stepped toward Sarah and extended her hand. Sarah took it, expecting to shake again, but then found herself pulled into a quick but intense hug. "I am _really glad_ to meet you, Rebecca. You two have fun." With that, Ellie walked away quickly, intent on not allowing them to ask her to stay.

xXx

Chuck watched Ellie walk away. He sighed silently in relief. He was not sure what Morgan was up to in the trees. He was also terrified that Rebecca would mention Mrs. Know-It-All. He would have to come clean to Ellie later. But at least he had avoided that bog of confusion and falsehood. It would be bad enough explaining it to each woman separately - but together? _God, that would have been terrible._

Rebecca turned toward him and away from Ellie. Beyond her, Chuck saw Ellie stop and turn. When she assured herself that Rebecca could not see, she gave Chuck a joyous double thumbs-up and mouthed a single word, "Amazing".

xXx

"So, Chuck, are you game to show me around?" Sarah asked.

He nodded eagerly, laughing. "Is that a Zoo pun?" He picked up the paper bag. She put out her arm and let Chuck put his through it, and, although he was the one showing her around, she led him away. It was only then that she realized she was in her running clothes - a snug black t-shirt over a sports bra, yoga pants, her running shoes. She had no make-up on and had pulled her hair back after barely brushing it. She thought she must look like a mess. Ellie had not seemed to think so though. And every time Chuck looked at her, she could not miss the awe in his gaze.

xXx

After a long walk around the Zoo, eating a couple of hotdogs, and after opening the bottles of water Ellie had bought, Chuck motioned toward a bench in the shade. Sarah sat down. Chuck stood in front of her, the paper bag still in his hand.

"What's in the bag, Chuck?"

He gave her a pained look. "Some stuff that belongs to Morgan, my friend. You saw him at the casting call."

She nodded. "Right, little guy, beard."

Chuck nodded. "That's him. I guess he's not going to find us. I thought he might...ah...come to the Zoo today and that I could give him this stuff back." He sat down, carefully putting the bag on his opposite side and pushing it a bit beneath the bench.

Sarah had no idea exactly how the day, the situation, had gotten away from her. She was supposed to avoid Chuck, not have an impromptu, unofficial second date. She had intruded on Chuck and Ellie when she should only have observed them. It was possible Ellie was Mrs. Know-It-All, although that seemed unlikely.

Why had she felt compelled to make her presence known? Why had she straightened Chuck's collar last night? Why had she dreamt of him during the night, his curly hair? Why had her apartment seemed to have his scent lingering in it when she woke up? Why did she make no list this morning? Why was she forgetting things?

She was not sure she wanted to know the answers. She was sure that she was glad to be sitting in the cool shade beside Chuck, watching the streams of people passing by. She could not remember the last time she had felt so loose-limbed, satisfied, happy. The Zoo had been so much fun. Chuck had kept her laughing and she had done the same for him. He had told her a little about Ellie and about their childhood, so she had a better sense of the nature of their bond, of its strength. At one point, Chuck had taken her hand and Sarah had allowed it for a while. They had to separate at one point so some children could pass between them, and when they had, Sarah had taken Chuck's hand. She was not sure it was possible to both feel this relaxed and giddy at the same time - but that was how she felt.

"So, does Morgan work for Mrs. Know-It-All too?"

Chuck looked away for a second. "Yes, Morgan works for Mrs. Know-It-All," Chuck said the words carefully, like he was testing them. Sarah was not sure what to make of it.

"Is he a personal assistant too?"

"No, believe it or not, he's Mrs. Know-It-All's agent."

"Really?"

"Swear to God, Rebecca." Sarah hated hearing him call her that, but she had no idea what to do about it. Now Ellie thought it was her name too.

"I've really enjoyed this, Chuck." The words came with no preceding thought. In fact, she thought them after she said them, but realized they were true. She was not going to take them back.

He smiled at her. "Me too." She saw him glance at her lips and start to lean forward. She felt her eyes close - a reflex. And then her phone chirped. Chuck carried through on the kiss, but what had promised to be passionate became a quick peck. "I'll let you see about that."

Sarah pulled the phone out of the pocket on the leg of her black pants.

She had a text. From Volkoff. He was ordering the fifth hit. Sarah stood up immediately, involuntarily. _Shit. _

"Rebecca, are you okay?"

She looked at Chuck. She could feel herself withdrawing behind her eyes, no longer apparent in their blue but hidden behind it. "Sorry, Chuck, I have to go." She started to walk away.

She got maybe ten feet and she stopped. She turned around.

He was looking at her, hurt and disappointment on his face.

She turned around again and got maybe ten more feet and she stopped. She turned around.

She sighed and walked back to him. _Serendipity. _She could not just walk away from happiness. She gave him a kiss on the lips, not long-lasting but forceful. When she pulled back, she looked at him. "Would like to have dinner with me later? 8 pm at _Abby's at Liaison_?" Chuck's hurt and disappointment vanished in a twinkling of his eye. He gave her that smile. Her smile. She returned it then she turned - and this time she did walk away, but she glanced back and gave him a small wave.

* * *

A/N2: More soon maybe. If you like this novella and have not read my _Miss Trust _or _Dying to Death_, you might want to give them a read. And, yay!, the new Tallest Man on Earth album is just out. Doubled over listening to it.

I'd like to hear from you. Please drop me a line - a review or PM.


	5. Chapter 5

AU novella. An advice columnist happens upon an arresting stranger, resulting in dangerous feelings, confusions, and errors. A romantic dramedy.

* * *

A/N1: If you haven't read Chapter Four and reviewed it, do that before you start this chapter, or you'll be lost.

Here we go.

I don't own _Chuck._

* * *

**Chuck vs. Mrs. Know-It-All**

CHAPTER FIVE

* * *

Sarah got to her car and then drove to her apartment. She had no particular memory of having done either.

Her internal world had eclipsed the external. She felt…? She did not know how she felt. Volkoff's text. Kissing Chuck.

Her interior was strobing. Dread, dark, cold and hard, flashed in her; she dreaded killing again for Volkoff. Between its flashes were flashes of happiness, light, warm and soft: she could not wait for her date with Chuck.

She looked at herself in her rearview mirror, giving herself an unsettling, frowny smile.

Of course, Volkoff would call for the final assassination just when she found Chuck.

Of course, she would have to kill just when she wanted to live, have to terminate just when she wanted to start.

There was nothing to do about it. Nothing she could think of. Her father's life depended on someone else's death.

Volkoff knew her, knew her methods. He would not expect the hit - regardless of the victim - to happen immediately. Sarah was a planner. A maker of lists. Careful. Being a ghost meant having deliberate foresight. She had time for her dinner date. It would be her first and only official date with Chuck - but even that was more than she had imagined having with him, a man like him. She would have dinner with him, allow the night to take its course (she trembled), and then she would leave him, never see him again. Finally, really walk away. She would do what Volkoff wanted, then collect her father, and they would move on. She could not be Chuck's...girlfriend. They could not really date. They had no future. But maybe a date with Chuck would point her toward a future. Maybe she could find...someone a little like him, and try to find a different kind of life.

She knew she was straining to see a silver lining. She knew that, despite how little time she would have spent with Chuck, really, - she knew she desperately would miss him. Leaving him would be like being cored, hollowed out. She knew how it would hurt. But if she did like him, and she really did, then she owed it to him to get out of his life, to remove her false from his true.

She went up to her apartment and shed her clothes. She showered, then she checked her weapons carefully: her pistol and silencer, ammunition, her holstered, sharpened knives and the thin braid of wire she kept in the lining of the dark jacket she wore for...jobs. Everything was in order on the counter where she worked. Everything was in disorder inside her where it hurt.

She went and crawled onto her bed, not turning the bedclothes down, and fell asleep. She woke up a little while later, with just enough time to get dressed for dinner and to stop at the Christian Science Reading Room.

xXx

She got out of the car down the block and walked the distance to the Reading Room. She went in, as she had four times before, and headed for the desk in the darkened corner, farthest from the light.

She sat down and pulled a book from a stack in the middle of the table, started to read it or look at it, glancing up surreptitiously every now and then. There were two other people in the Room, neither paying any attention to her.

She slipped one hand under the desk and found the envelope taped there. She carefully, soundlessly, pulled it free. She looked up again. Still, no one was watching. She opened the envelope and a sheet of paper fell out. _Kill Mrs. Know-It-All, advice columnist. _

xXx

Sarah almost bitterly laughed out loud. Almost. This had to be a cruel joke. The latest and cruelest in the series of such jokes she called her life.

She had no idea who Mrs. Know-It-All was, and the only link to her was the man she was going on a date with later. A real official date - he was her date, not her mark. She was not cultivating him so as to get near her target. No, she had chosen _Abby's at Liaison_ because she had been there once and loved the atmosphere, the food, the music, and the dancing. She had been apart from it then, as always, but tonight she wanted to be a part of it. She wanted to enjoy all of that - once - with Chuck Bartowski. She was not going to turn her one night into an early stage of a Volkoff hit.

_Who is Mrs. Know-It-All anyway_? She had to find out now. Volkoff would give her time - but not long. She could not dice with her dad's life. She needed to find the advice columnist, the elusive woman, soon. But she did not want to taint her night with Chuck. And she did not want to make Chuck any party to the death of his employer.

Sarah squeezed her eyes shut, grinding her teeth, clenching her fists. Killing Mrs. Know-It-All, although the woman had turned out to be a pain, was not remotely like hitting some vile competitor of Volkoff's. Those men were not innocent, not by a far cry, and she could tell herself that despite the real damage killing them had done to her, to her soul, she had at least saved others from violence or death. A brutal and, she feared, ultimately empty cost-benefit analysis. _But Mrs. Know-It-All_? An advice columnist? Even if her advice were bad - even if it were abysmal - she did not deserve a gelid visit from the Ice Queen.

Sarah got up and went to the set of newspapers hanging on the reading room wall. She pulled down the _LA Daily News_ and flipped through it until she found the sketch of herself. She read the first letter - _From Russia with Love? -_\- and found it a sad, touching. She read Mrs. Know-It-All's response, and she teared up.

She was going to have to kill the woman who wrote that? The woman who was "personally encouraged" by _From Russia. Damn it. Damn me._

Sarah's life was unfair. She had joined the CIA to protect her dad. She left it to stop killing. She had become a killer again to protect her dad. She wanted the killing to be done. She did not want to kill again - ever again.

She got up and left the Room, walking to her car, trying to clear her head. She did not see a dark-haired figure step out of the shadows and stare at her as she walked away.

xXx

Lester watched the assassin, Volkoff's pet assassin - the Walker woman - as she disappeared down the block. Lester could tell from the way she was dressed and acting that she was not heading to perform the hit. While she was in the Reading Room, Lester had put a bug on her car. Now, he just needed her to lead him to Mrs. Know-It-All, and he needed to kill the columnist before Walker could. If necessary, he would kill Walker too. And then Volkoff would finally give Lester his due respect. And Jeff too. Lester could not forget about Jeff. Jeff was in the van with the tracking equipment.

xXx

Claudia looked around her dusty apartment. She had not been there in months. She needed to go ahead and dust and clean. She did not know how long she would stay. Alexei paid for the apartment now, and she hoped he would go on paying for it. She had modeling work lined up, so she could start paying if she needed to. But she wanted Alexei to come for her, to say the words to her. If he could manage to say those words, perhaps he could also manage other changes?

xXx

As Sarah neared her car, she stopped. She was in front of a shop window, a bridal shop. In the window was a wedding dress of rare beauty, a marvel. Sarah turned and looked at it. She wondered at herself. She was not really a shopper, and certainly not a window shopper. And a bridal shop window? A wedding gown? _Sarah, get a grip. _As she turned, the streetlights were just right: her reflection in the window superimposed itself over the dress almost perfectly, creating the illusion that she had stepped into it, was wearing it. She wondered at herself, but in awe, not in question. She stood rooted to the spot for a long while, her gaze dreamier and dreamier. Eventually, she shook her head and took a step back, shattering the illusion.

_An illusion._

xXx

Chuck was pacing outside the restaurant, at a distance from the door, practicing his apology, like he was drafting a letter.

"Look, Rebecca. I am sorry. I should have told you this from the first, but...I am Mrs. Know-It-All. It's a long story. I needed a picture of her - um, of _me_, but, you know, of _her — _for this big syndication deal. I saw you and I sketched you and I couldn't get that sketch - couldn't get you - out of my mind. It was penciled on paper; it was inked in my mind. So I changed it a little and I used it. I am sorry. Really, I am sorry. I will call the syndication folks tomorrow and work it out, get it removed, even if it costs me the contract. I don't care about that. Can you forgive me, maybe, please?"

He wrinkled his nose. That was no great apology. He would have to hope he could do better extemporizing on the spot. He made himself a promise: he would tell her the truth tonight, no matter what. Lying to her was betraying her image.

"Chuck?" He heard Rebecca's voice behind him. He turned. She had on a simple blue dress with matching heels. There was a blue ribbon in her hair. She was both impossible to look at and impossible to look away from. She was impossible. She smiled at his reaction, smiled to herself but let him see it. It was incredibly endearing. He was hers if she would have him. Absolutely hers.

xXx

"Hey, Rebecca!" Chuck finally responded to her. He had been looking at her in that way again, that way that reaffirmed her place in the world. He was wearing a black shirt under a navy-blue jacket, jeans and the tennis shoes it seemed he always wore. It looked like he had made an effort to tame his curls but they had resisted. He was perfect.

"So, have you ever been here before?"

Chuck shook his head. Sarah closed the distance between them. She took his hand in hers. _This is a date, Chuck. Officially. _She saw his eyes close briefly at the contact between them, felt him tremble. She understood his response.

"I was here once, Chuck. I liked it. I wasn't able to stay long, but I always thought it would be fun to come here again..._with_ someone." She flicked her eyes to his and then glanced away.

"I've heard of it, a cool place," Chuck noted as they went in. Sarah could see how excited he was to be there with her. That warm feeling she had when around him claimed her again, head to toe.

A hostess was stationed inside the door. Chuck was gawking at the stylish decor. Sarah grinned at him and told the hostess that they had reservations, under 'Rebecca'. As the hostess checked on the reservation and gathered menus, Sarah cursed herself. She wanted this night to be special, pure. Having to be Rebecca stained it. She wished she could think of a way to take that back, but she could not. Especially not now, with Volkoff perched, waiting for her to kill Mrs. Know-It-All.

Sarah ejected the thought from her mind. If she let herself go in that direction, the evening would change its character, become missional, fake, no longer truly romantic, a date. She would feel like she was pumping Chuck for information, manipulating him. Using his feelings for her, his admiration of her, against him. She was not sure how to find Mrs. Know-It-All without involving Chuck, but that was what she would do. She did not want to think about her real-unreal life tonight. She wanted to be a girl, Chuck's girl. One night. That surely was not too much to ask. An intermission from her life.

The hostess seated them. As she walked away, Chuck gave Sarah a concerned look. "Rebecca, are you okay?"

Sarah realized she had been lost in her thoughts. She did not want that. She wanted to be present. This would be her only night with him; she coveted each moment "Yes, I'm great, Chuck. Just thinking."

Chuck gave her a slow, shy smile. "You are beautiful when you are thinking. But, then, you are beautiful no matter what you are doing. I guess I am trying to say that _you_ are beautiful."

Sarah blinked away tears. She could not remember being called beautiful like that, when the man believed it and was looking into her eyes, looking at _her_ when he said it, not stealing a glance at her body as it was revealed by or filled an article of clothing. The compliment was not tactical or strategic; it was no means to an end. It was an end-in-itself, offered freely and for free, gracious through-and-through.

"Thank you, Chuck. I'm really glad we are doing this." _More than you know, more than I dare say._

A waiter came and took their drink order. When he left, Sarah leaned toward Chuck and whispered, "Would you like to dance?"

She saw a flash of panic in his eyes, but it was followed by resolution. "Sure, I would like that a lot. But I warn you, I am not a great dancer."

She said nothing in response. She just grabbed his hand and led him across the restaurant out onto the dance floor. They found an open spot among the couples and began to dance. Sarah could see, after a moment or so, that Chuck's awkwardness was largely a matter of self-consciousness. He was imagining how he looked dancing, instead of dancing.

Sarah danced to him, pressing herself against him enjoying his sharp intake of breath. She leaned into him and put her lips against his ear. "Remember, Chuck, you are dancing with me, not for anyone. Just me and the music. Nothing else." Pressed against him, she could feel the heat radiate from his body. She knew he could feel the heat radiate from hers.

She stepped back and gazed earnestly into his face. He gave her a slightly addled but thankful glance and, in a moment, his dancing became far less awkward. He kept his eyes on her as she danced and she watched as he slowly forgot about himself and became lost in her, and in her dance. She danced until she became lost in him.

xXx

They eventually went back to their table. Their drinks were waiting, and they were both hot and thirsty. Chuck took a long drink of his beer and then looked at Sarah. "Thanks for that, for the dancing and the...instructions. I've never enjoyed dancing before but, with you, that was…that was…" He licked his lips.

"Yeah…" Sarah sighed, licking her lips and completing his thought by not completing it. The waiter came back and asked if they were ready to order. They both looked quickly at the menu and placed their orders.

As the waiter walked away, Chuck gave Sarah a long, appraising look. "What is it, Chuck?"

He shook his head, smiling a baffled smile. "I don't know...and I guess this is probably not the sort of thing to say...so early...on a...first date...but I just have the strangest feeling about you…"

Chuck trailed off and Sarah felt a spike of panic. He continued: "I...I mean I don't know much of anything about you, really, and yet I feel like I know you...like I have known you forever, or knew forever that I would eventually know you," - he waved his hands in the air as if they could speak for him - "or something like that..."

Sarah's panic vanished and her all-over-warmth increased. The thought of anyone knowing her had always filled her with dread and shame. But she wanted Chuck to know her, she wanted to be known by him, to make herself known to him.

_Volkoff, Sarah. Termination. _She could not let herself act on what she wanted, however. _And, anyway, he thinks he knows...Rebecca. _

Chuck grinned, self-mocking. "I went on a date...a while ago...and there was dancing involved. It was not pretty. I'm pretty sure the doormen at that place have a photo of me taped to their clipboard with the caption. 'Never again!'"

Sarah chuckled. "Well, you did well out there, Chuck. Really well," she moved her foot under the table to make contact with his, slid it up his calf. "I liked my partner." Chuck gulped and Sarah chuckled again, and she slid her foot down but left it in contact with his.

"Thanks for what you said, Chuck, about...knowing me. I'm not an easy person to know. My past is...well, let's just say that it's not always easy to re-live it or share it."

Chuck nodded feelingly. "I get that. I can't claim I am in a hurry to share every decision I have made...or not made. I mean my current job, for instance - I didn't really, exactly _choose _it. It just kind of...happened. And, although it turns out that I am good at it, and maybe even doing some good, it just doesn't feel like _me, _you know."

Sarah dropped her chin but held Chuck's gaze. "I know."

"So, what do you do for a living, Rebecca?"

_Kill. Lie. Steal. _"Oh, right now I am sort of between jobs. I used to work for a company...a travel company, one that writes tourist manuals, and I traveled, shooting photos and writing small bits to appear in the manuals." _And I am lying right now to you, Chuck, even with my foot pressed against yours. _

Chuck narrowed his eyes.

"What?" Sarah asked.

He bit his lower lip, thinking. "I don't know. That just isn't quite what I imagined. I mean that sounds cool and exciting-but, I don't know…" He shook his head and took a sip from his beer. She saw him look at the label on the bottle and could tell that he was trying to decide something.

She increased the pressure of her foot against his. "Is there something you need to tell me, Chuck?"

His ears had turned red. He glanced at her and glanced away. Then he closed his eyes. After a moment, he opened them and faced her. "Rebecca, I...well, I guess it is obvious that I like you - a lot - and I can't stand not telling you the truth. Look, Rebecca, I don't actually work for Mrs. Know-It-All."

Sarah was too stunned by the turn of conversation to manage a reply beyond: "Huh?"

"Yes, see, I don't work for Mrs. Know-It-All because _I am Mrs. Know-It-All_."

A black hole opened and swallowed Sarah. She could not think, feel. She could not move. Time slowed; space bent. Finally, she managed words, an icy tone. "Chuck, tell me you are joking. Tell me that's not true. Please tell me you are joking."

Chuck winced. "I can't, Rebecca. I am her. I mean...well, you know. I just kind of fell into the job and the column had been written by a woman and the paper thought it best if it seemed like it still was and…"

"Chuck, tell me you are joking." Sarah's voice was flint, chipped and edgy.

His look told her he was not. Sarah stood up and opened her purse. She grabbed a wad of bills and tossed them on the table. "I am leaving, Chuck. And do not-_do you hear me?!_-do not, for the love of God, do not follow me or contact me." She wheeled away from him and careened out of the restaurant, nearly crashing into the hostess.

xXx

Lester was sitting in the van with Jeff. Jeff was singing Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin"; he was badly off-key but belting it out. At least he was not pestering Lester with constant questions. Lester had earlier almost punched Jeff when he seriously asked Lester to know why they were 'human beans' since they did not seem like beans.

Lester had shoved the Moody Blues cassette into the ancient tape deck, knowing it would mollify Jeff's curiosity. But the cost was the dreadful _auto-off-tune_ singalong.

Lester had settled in, expecting a long night, when he saw Walker shove through the restaurant doors. Her face was a melange of pain and fear. He thought he saw tears on her cheeks. She started walking faster and faster until she was almost running by the time she reached her car. She dug her keys from her purse, wiped her eyes, looked back at the restaurant and got inside.

"Go, Jeff, go! She's on the move."

Jeff stopped mid-yodel. "But we have a tracker."

"I know, I know. But if she gets too far ahead of us, she will kill Mrs. Know-It-All before we get there."

"But Volkoff wants _her_ to kill Mrs. Know-It-All, right?"

"Right. But we don't."

Jeff frowned but pulled out and got in the line of cars a few cars behind Walker. "Can you explain this to me again, Lester? I'm lost."

xXx

Sarah felt like she was going to be sick. She could not stop crying. This could not be happening. Things could not go like this. She had been tasked to kill Chuck. Chuck. The man she had expected to spend the evening with - and hoped maybe the night - was her target.

She reached into her purse and yanked her phone free. Desperate through her tears, she punched Carina's number. She had to talk to someone. _Kill Mrs. Know-It-All_. Chuck was Mrs. Know-It-All. Kill Chuck.

"Carina? Thank God! It's Sarah. Where are you?"

"Whoa, blondie! What's wrong?" Carina's concern was real, immediate.

"Can't say on the phone. Where are you?"

"San Francisco. You?"

Sarah hitched for a split-second, then answered. "LA. How soon can you be here?"

"If I can get a direct flight, a few hours. I will be there by as fast as I can, Sarah."

Sarah wept, her misery cascading down her face.

Carina heard it. "Sarah, Sarah, it's okay. We'll fix it. Girl, I promise"

"We can't fix this, Carina. I broke everything; everything's gone to hell."

"Give me your address. I'm on my way…"

xXx

Stationary.

Chuck watched Rebecca leave like he was a chunk of statuary. He could not move, react. Stunned disbelief held him frozen.

What had happened?

Yes, he had lied - and he could understand Rebecca being angry, even angry enough to leave, furious. (He deserved it, really.) But her reaction had not been _anger._ It had been severe, deep, awful - but not _anger_. Something else had sent her out the door. It had seemed like...fear.

He stood up. The waiter came, a solicitous look on his face. Chuck gestured to the bills on the table and shrugged. The waiter gave him a kind smile.

By the time he got outside, Rebecca was nowhere to be seen. Chuck walked around the block, looking for her, but no luck. He had the number she had put in his phone, but he thought he might want to wait to call her - if he called her. Maybe it would be best to let her go. As undeniably right as being with her felt, there was something wrong on the margins, some tincture of something undefinable, but..._off._ Rebecca. He was almost sure that was not her name, not really. He had fallen for a nameless woman. Some Mrs. Know-It-All he turned out to be. He was an ignoramus. The next time he needed advice, he sure as hell was not going to write to himself.

But he did need advice. He needed to talk to someone. He flagged down a taxi and gave the driver Ellie's address.

xXx

Sarah had no clear memory of her drive from the restaurant or of her trip upstairs to her apartment. More forgetting. The trip was all hidden behind a veil of tears. She was just there, in the apartment, face down on the couch, weeping, weeping uncontrollably, the spot under her face wet almost immediately. She could not stop. It was as if some dammed reservoir of pain and misery inside her, old and new, had burst, and it was all breaking free, a tsunami of tears and sobs.

She could not hear her own footfalls behind her. She had finally caught up with herself. She wept. She wept for the girl she had been, the woman she had become, the woman she would never be. She wept until tears deserted her. She went on, sobbing dryly.

Eventually, she fell asleep and slept for a couple of hours; she was bone-weary, staggered beneath her life. She woke and wept again. It took a long time, but the weeping ended; she had no more to sacrifice. She had wept them all, wept for everything.

She rolled over and gazed at the ceiling. It was low and ominous, the top of a sepulcher. She shut her eyes, trying to change the way everything around her looked - flat, grey, meaningless. When she opened them, everything was still the same.

Chuck flashed back into her mind. He was not flat, grey and meaningless. But it hurt so much to think of him that she could not bear it. She sat up and face the wall-more specifically, her tv. She did not watch tv normally, except now and then late at night when dream-induced sleeplessness drove her to it. She needed a distraction now, though. It would not be long before Carina got there, assuming she had gotten a direct flight.

Sarah picked up the remote from the coffee table and turned the tv on. Some show was going to commercial, a local commercial.

"Do you need help?" asked the syrupy voice-over, "Remember, a friend in need is a friend indeed. If you need help, write to Mrs. Know-It-All, LA, and the nation's, premier advice columnist…She'll understand."

Sarah watched, her mouth hanging open and moving slightly, a porch swing in the breeze.

It was not just the fact that it was a Mrs. Know-It-All commercial; it was not just the fact of the voice over, the way the words hit her; it was the fact that she was looking _at herself. On the screen was Sarah_. The video must have been shot at the Zoo. The shot was a close up of her face as she had been talking to Chuck. She - Volkoff's pet assassin - was on the tv. But that was not what captured or bewildered her at the moment. Her face. It was her face. Her expression. She was talking to Chuck and her face was the face of a woman in love. In love. Love. Her Dad taught her to read people. She read herself: love.

That was _impossible_. She had known him - and only a little - or just a few days. Two, really, since they had not really interacted at the movie. And time was not the only factor. 'Love' was not a word in Sarah's operative vocabulary; it was simply not one of her words. She had excommunicated it from meaningful use many years ago when she came to understand the 'games' she and her dad had been playing, when she understood what a con was. She had given up the word because she had given up on the reality of what it stood for - at least as a possibility in her life. Still, there she was on the screen, smiling joyfully, unaware of herself, a real girl in love with a real boy. Love. The word stood for that look on the face - a look she had never seen on her face before. She wondered if Ellie saw that look on her face. Chuck might not have known what it meant-but Ellie...

She turned off the tv, tossed the remote on the coffee table and watched it slide off the opposite side and fall to the floor. She dropped her head in her hands. She sat there like that for a minute or so. Her phone rang. She walked to her purse and got it out. Carina.

"I'm on the ground in LA. About to get a taxi. Be there soon. You okay?"

"I don't know. I don't know anything anymore. Hurry, okay?"

"Hurrying." Carina ended the call.

Sarah looked at the time. After 2 am.

xXx

Ellie was sitting in her pajamas, staring silently at Chuck, his long-spiraling explanation finally done. She shut her eyes, rubbed her temples. "Tell me you are joking, Chuck."

Chuck jerked at the phrase. "I'm not joking, El. I am Mrs. Know-It-All. See, I knew you'd be ashamed of me."

"Ashamed of you? Little brother, are you crazy? You write a syndicated advice column. You are making real money. Why would I be ashamed? I think it's great. Weird, yes, but great. The problem's never been _me, _Chuck, the problem's been _you_. You don't think it's great, do you?"

Chuck shrugged. "See, that's the problem," Ellie chided. "You've offloaded your ambivalence about it onto me, Chuck. I know I push on you; I know I interfere; I know I scold. But, Chuck, I do it on your behalf, _in loco Chuck_.."

"What's that mean, Ellie?"

"It means that I can see that you feel like you are failing yourself, that you are unhappy with, you know, your lot in life. That you feel you are not living up to your own standards. But you sometimes...Jesus, Chuck...you sometimes just seem willing to go on like that indefinitely, like it's some sort of pointless five-year plan. I've been trying to be the voice of your conscience."

Chuck nodded thoughtfully. He gave her a rueful grin. "I don't think it works that way, though, Ellie."

She huffed and blew her bangs into the air. "I know that, Chuck, but I sometimes get so damned frustrated watching you...settle for things, yield to circumstance...surrender."

He sat staring at nothing for a minute. "No, I get it, Ellie. And I should have just told you from the beginning. The longer I went on lying the harder it got to face telling you the truth. 'The brighter the lie the darker the shadows.' I think Mrs. Know-It-All said that in a letter a few months ago."

They sat in mutual silence for a time. Ellie had been staring at the floor and she looked up. "So, you told Rebecca you were Mrs. Know-It-All and she stormed out?"

"'Stormed' isn't quite the right word, Ellie. More like 'bolted' or...I don't know...some word other than 'stormed'. It felt like she was...protecting me, afraid for me, not pissed at me." Chuck threw his hands in the air. "God, I hate it that she ran."

"I don't understand it, Chuck. I saw her look at you at the Zoo. That woman has real feelings for you."

"How is that possible, Ellie? We really just met."

"Are you joking, Chuck?" Chuck winced again. "Look at you, you have real feelings for her. Obviously, it is possible."

Silence again.

"Ellie, I don't think her name is really Rebecca."

"What? What do you mean? Why would she lie about that, Chuck?"

"I have no idea. I just have this feeling about her, about that name."

"This just keeps getting more crazy, Chuck. My head is spinning."

xXx

"My head hurts," Jeff whined.

They were sitting in the van, but now outside Walker's apartment. "So, the blonde assassin is not Mrs. Know-It-All, even though her picture is in the newspaper and even though we saw her on a Mrs. Know-It-All commercial on that tv at the gas station a minute ago. Is that right, Lester?"

"Right. I don't know why that sketch of her is there, or why she is on the commercial, but I am guessing it is because she knows Mrs. Know-It-All; they have some kind of connection. But now Volkoff has ordered a hit on Mrs. Know-It-All. Walker has to do it because she has to keep her dad alive. Or she has to try to fake it. So, all we need to do is wait for a woman to show up, or for Walker to go visit a woman, and-BOOM," Lester practically shouted and Jeff jumped in his seat, "we kill her and Volkoff sees what we can do."

Jeff stared off into the distance. "I'm not really sure I want to kill anybody, Lester. I like doing laundry. The detergent smells good, clean. And Volkoff's clothes are nice. I mean, when they aren't bloody. The blood is hard to get out. Can't we just keep doing what we are doing, keep doing the laundry?"

"Don't you have any ambition, Jeff? I am destined for greater things, my friend; you have hitched your wagon to a star!"

"I don't have a wagon," Jeff noted, his forehead buckling under his effort of thought.

At just that moment, a taxi stopped in front of Walker's building. Lester and Jeff peeked out. A tall, thin red-headed woman got out after an exchange with the driver. She looked around for a second, her gaze stopping for a moment on the van. But then her gaze went on, sweeping the area. She turned and went to the front door, facing away from the van.

Lester quietly rolled down his window. The taxi had departed and there was no noise in the empty street. He heard the woman speak into the intercom. "Sarah, it's me. I'm here." A buzz and a click.

Lester turned a grim smile on Jeff, then made a gun of his hand, aimed at the woman as she went into the building, and whispered, "Boom!"

* * *

A/N2: OOookay...the something or other has hit the something or other. Or is about to. Hit it, that is. (Assassin humor.)

I had a guest reviewer (thanks!) mention _farce _as a category for this story. Yep. (It has strong lines of filiation that run to my _Chutes and Ladders_, which I called a 'noir farce'.)

More thoughts?

More comments = faster posting. (Zettel fanfiction equation.)


	6. Chapter 6

AU novella. An advice columnist happens upon an arresting stranger, resulting in dangerous feelings, confusions, and errors. A romantic dramedy.

* * *

A/N1: Visits and visitors, welcome and unwelcome. A final character joins our cast.

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

**Chuck vs. Mrs. Know-It-All**

CHAPTER SIX

* * *

Lester oozed out of the van, gazing all around him. He could feel unfamiliar the weight of the pistol he had on him, shoulder-holstered beneath his windbreaker. His palms were sweaty. He was almost certain he had a rash; his forearms itched. He heard Jeff's door click shut. Lester gathered himself then scampered across the street and Jeff came lumbering after, a backpack on his shoulders. They descended the ramp to the building's orange-lit parking garage. The on-duty attendant was asleep - that simplified things considerably. Lester felt better.

He led Jeff quietly past the attendant's glass cubicle and down further into the garage. Finally, skirting parked cars, Lester got to the elevator. When Jeff caught up, Lester motioned with his hand for Jeff to turn around. Jeff instead imitated the motion. Lester made the motion again more forcefully, and Jeff did too, until, finally, Jeff comprehended. He turned.

Lester smacked Jeff on the top of his head, and unzipped the backpack. He took out an electronic device from which dangled a keycard. Lester put the keycard in the slot and turned on the device. A few seconds later, the elevator door opened. Lester smiled quiet victory. It worked. He would have crowed, but he needed to be quiet.

They got on the elevator. Lester knew Walker's apartment number. Although Walker had tried to keep Volkoff unaware of her address, Volkoff had found it and Lester had been with him when Volkoff got the information. They rode up to Walker's floor and, when the elevator doors opened, they peered out into the hallway, Jeff low, Lester high. Lester unholstered his pistol, but hid it, arm across his chest, inside his unzipped jacket. No one was in sight. Lester again led the way, tiptoeing to Walker's door. Jeff joined him. Lester put his finger to his lips. In the silence, they heard voices. Each put his ear to the door, Lester high, Jeff low.

xXx

Volkoff could not sleep. His bed was empty. His bedroom was empty. His vast house was empty.

_Empty_.

Claudia.

He knew she was back at her apartment. He had contemplated going to see her. But she would demand the words again-and even without Jeff and Lester as witnesses, he was not sure he could say the words. He had been a bad guy-_be honest, Alexei_-for a long time. He was an old dog. He had new tricks in him. All the tricks he knew were bad.

He got up and padded downstairs. He still had no word from Walker about the new hit. He assumed she had gotten the envelope by now. Lester said he delivered it. _Damn that Mrs. Know-It-All!_ This was all her fault. People should not give advice - or sell it either. They should mind their own damn business, the way Alexei minded his. _Business_. _Just business. Always business. Damn euphemism. _

He knew Walker hated what he was compelling her do. Truthfully, that had been part of the charm of her plight when Volkoff created it. Walker's double silent misery, for her dad, but also for herself; he had enjoyed it.

Now, Volkoff was beginning to worry. Sending Walker after other bad guys, mobster monsters, was one thing. No one, hardly, had shed a tear about the four monsters he had her put down. Their own organizations sighed in relief. Even the police had mounted only a token investigation.

Mrs. Know-It-All was not _that kind_ of monster. Maybe not really a monster at all, Just a wordy, misguided female busybody with a regrettable loudspeaker. Maybe Walker would balk finally, refuse. It was possible that she would, despite her sad, desperate love for her albatross of a father. That man was going to be the death of Walker.

Done musing, Volkoff decided he needed to do something. _Back-up_. He needed back-up, an insurance plan.

He knew of one other female assassin who operated from a headquarters somewhere nearby, and he knew how to contact her. It was only money, after all - and Mrs. Know-It-All needed to go. Volkoff needed to be sure. No one was allowed to disrupt Alexei Volkoff's life like this, make him feel..._empty_. He picked up the phone and dialed a number. Back-up.

xXx

Chuck woke up. He was asleep on Ellie's couch. She had put a blanket over him.

He must have slept through Devon's arrival because he saw Devon's shoulder bag on the floor by the door. Chuck realized he woke up because his phone was chirping. He picked it up from the floor beside him. There was a message from Morgan: no comment, just a link.

Chuck pressed it and the link opened. It was a video - a commercial for Mrs. Know-It-All's column. His heart sank as he watched it. Morgan had gotten video of Rebecca at the Zoo. He must have forwarded it to the syndication folks and they must have had the ad ready, just waiting for the video. Chuck let the phone dangle, still in his hand. If Rebecca - or whatever her name was - saw this, it was over. _It already is. _He brought the phone back up and played the video again. At one point, he stopped it. Rebecca was talking to him, although he was off-camera.

He remembered the moment; he had been caught up in what she was saying. But now, with no sound, he could study her, study her face. That look on her face…

Ellie was right. Rebecca did feel...something. Chuck was hesitant to word the feeling. But if she did, why had she just _left_? Chuck sat up then stood up. After quickly pulling himself and his things together, he called a cab and he headed outside to wait in the dark. He needed to go home and consider all this, think all this through. See about Dud. Then he needed to call Rebecca and determine if there was any chance to fix whatever it was he had broken - smashed - with his lies. He burned with shame and remorse in the dark.

xXx

Volkoff finished negotiations and ended the call. The extra assassin had taken the job, snapped it up, actually, hardly negotiating the price. She seemed confident that she could find Mrs. Know-It-All. She had promised to start as soon as she hung up the phone. He would not be able to reach her after the call; she was going dark until the job was done.

Volkoff walked to his study and poured a drink. He felt something about what he was doing, and it felt vaguely like...regret. _Regret?_ That emotion, really? He had no truck with regret. Alexei Volkoff did not look back, or around, for that matter; he was not a man given to reflection.

He sat down heavily at his desk and sipped at the drink in the dark, his eyes shut. After long minutes, he put down the tumbler and opened his laptop. He sat up straight and found a link to Mrs. Know-It-All's column. The link was to a letter and answer from a month back. Sipping while his eyes descended across the screen, he started reading Mrs. Know-It-All, reading old letters and answers.

xXx

On the taxi ride home, Chuck noticed an email from Morgan. It had been sent ahead of the video, evidently. In it, Morgan explained what Chuck had already worked out. The commercial had been ready to air and Morgan had supplied video at the last minute. Morgan was inordinately pleased with himself and with the final result. "With someone that looks like Mrs. Know-It-All writing, you are going to absolutely blow up!" That was the last line.

Chuck put his phone away and paid the driver. He got out and went inside. He was confused about so much. Since Jill, he had no idea how he wanted to spend his life or who he wanted to spend it with. He was getting clearer on the latter, though, even if he did not know her name. He unlocked the apartment, walked in wearily, and plopped down in his desk chair. Dud waddled in, grumbling against disturbance. Chuck gave him a scratch behind the ears, then he waddled back out, still grumbling but more good-naturedly. Chuck needed to sit in the quiet and reflect. Talking to Ellie had helped but he had reached no decisions.

xXx

Carina knocked softly on Sarah's door. It opened almost immediately and Carina almost fell over. She was shocked.

The cool, composed, and constantly carefully controlled Sarah Walker she had always known had been replaced by a woman in a rumpled dress, her feet bare, her eyes puffy from crying, her cheeks damp and red from tears and wiping tears away.

For a moment, Carina felt her world had become incoherent, off-axis. Everything wobbled. Walker had always been her rock, her ideal of put-together. She knew Sarah had her demons-in their shared line of work, who did not? And Sarah had been on the bloodiest, cruelest end of that work, death's delivery woman. But she had always seemed to be able to cope, put that away, and somehow to remain a woman Carina liked, even loved - her best friend.

Carina had been worried about Sarah when Sarah left the Company. That job was a curse, Jesus knew, but it's pace and danger had supplied Sarah something to bring her laser focus to bear on other than herself. Each new mission had 'ejected' the previous one - Sarah had contrived to live wholly in the present. Despite their friendship, Carina knew only crumbs about Sarah's past, and those crumbs were spy rumor, none confirmed; Sarah had never explained anything, never even admitted to anything. When her past came up, she shut down, became hermetically sealed. Naturally introverted, the Company had made her professionally so. But their shared missions had convinced Carina of Sarah's mastery of her...craft. She was the best spy Carina had ever seen - although Carina was not about to admit that to Sarah.

The disheveled woman shaking in front of Carina was, Carina realized with a start, the woman who had been locked in that carefully contrived iron mask all these years. Maybe Carina had always known that dimly; maybe that was why she had been willing to never pry into what Walker did solo for Graham.

Carina knew other CIA assassins, bitches or sons of bitches all, borderline sociopaths, employed serial killers. Sarah had never seemed like that. Never. Despite her demons, her contradictions and the enormous emotional energy keeping herself together demanded from her, she had never seemed like that.

Carina stepped in the door and Sarah closed it. Carina opened her arms and Sarah fell into them, weeping. After a moment, Sarah started talking, babbling really, everything muffled by Carina's shoulder and Sarah's wracking sobs. Sarah finally pulled back her head and Carina could hear her words.

"I have to kill him..._him_, Carina. I have to kill him. I can't do it. If I don't, they'll kill dad…I have to kill Chuck Bartowski, he's Mrs. Know-It-All."

Carina felt dizzy, unsure what Sarah was talking about, although she divined that the _him, _Chuck Bartowski, the man in question, was almost certainly the curly-headed man Sarah had mentioned in that earlier phone call. It had been obvious from Sarah's voice that something special was happening to her. Something that had not happened to Sarah before.

Carina never tired of the _spies don't fall in love _mantra, mainly because she was always afraid she would, and she tried to ward the possibility off, using the mantra like a spell. Carina was suddenly sure that Sarah had gone and done it - _fallen in love_.

"Hey, hey, I'm here. I can't help if I don't understand. Take a breath, Sarah, and explain this to me. _Him_? _Mrs_. Know-It-All?" Sarah nodded and brought herself under a modicum of control. She stepped away and looked at Carina.

"Thanks for coming."

They went into the apartment and sat down on the couch. "Sarah, I need you to start at the beginning. What have you been doing in LA? Why would you have to kill someone? You're out."

Sarah wiped her eyes. She stared at her hands. Then she spoke in a small voice, almost the voice of a girl: "It starts with my dad…"

Sarah fitfully told Carina the whole story, her whole story.

xXx

In the hallway, not long after Carina had gone inside, Lester pulled his ear from the door. _Mrs_. Know-It-All was a _Mister. _A Chuck Bartowski. Almost certainly, he was the man Walker met at that restaurant, given Walker's current distress. Lester had been right; Walker knew Mrs. Know-It-All. Lester touched Jeff's shoulder, then again put his finger to his lips, ordering Jeff to follow silently. Lester holstered his pistol, wiping the sweat from his palms on his pants legs. He needed to find this Bartowski. And kill him.

xXx

Alexandra Forrest, ex-CIA agent turned hitwoman, stood close behind the pencil-necked geek who she paid to do her computer work, her hacking. He was worth the money, even if he wanted her to pay him in other ways. A couple of times, when she was...itchy...she had paid him in other ways. It kept him willing, pliable. It scratched her itch.

The CIA had sent her packing after a brutal mission in which she had killed her marks and managed to get the team of agents working with her killed too. She was a high-cost, low-reward agent, or so Graham had told her when he handed her the walking papers. She had taken her first contract for a hit a few days later. She should have done it long before. Her new life agreed with her. She was her own boss, an independent businesswoman, and she did her job as she saw fit. That usually meant that her terminations were done with truly extreme prejudice, trailing gore and pain. But, still, never leaving a trail back to her.

She had heard that there was another woman performing occasional hits who seemed to be working out of LA, but her best efforts, and the geek's best efforts, had never given her a lead. She had suspected it was that bitch, Walker, the Ice Queen, mainly because she had quit the Company shortly before Forrest had been shown the door, and she clearly had the relevant skill set.

That did not matter now. It was something to worry about later. If she could do this job for Volkoff, then she could tap into a likely constant source of future income. She loved the money, but she loved the work more. She needed to work. It was her gift, she had realized.

"I think I have it," the man said, turning around with a hopeful leer. "I was able to get into the newspaper's secure server and I found emails. Mrs. Know-It-All is not a woman, he...she..._he_ is a man. Charles Irving Bartowski. And…" he punched more keys, geek excitement showing in the set of his narrow shoulders over his keyboard, "...payroll has an address." He turned to her with an expectant look, his finger pointing. She bent over and looked at the screen, wrote the address down on a scrap of paper. The geek was staring at her breasts as she finished writing. _What the hell, I have a little time, and he never takes very long. _One day, she knew, she would kill him. Not today. She pushed his rolling desk chair back and pulled her t-shirt over her head.

xXx

Back in the van, Lester was on the phone. He had a second-cousin who worked for the phone company. The cousin admired Lester. Lester was sure that his cousin could get him an address. Jeff was staring out the window. He seemed troubled, out-of-focus-but that was par for the Jeff course.

The tracker was still on Walker's car (a useful back-up), but Lester did not want to be forced into chasing her around, playing Follow-the-Leader. He wanted to be able to get to wherever Bartowski was _first_, to scope it out, start making a plan. Daybreak was coming. The first day of the rest of Lester's life. And Jeff's too.

xXx

_God, Sarah, good God. _

Carina had no idea. All this time, and no earthly idea. She had no idea of what Sarah had been carrying around inside all those years, of the dead weight of pain. And now Sarah's past had caught up with her present and was threatening her father and her future.

"Can we go see Chuck, explain this?" Carina asked urgently. "I mean I know that's a big step, and he might not recover from the truth, Sarah," she watched a heavy shadow of pain cross her friend's face, "but at least we can find some way to keep him alive. We could hide him and maybe then go after your dad, take your Dad from Volkoff…"

Sarah brightened for a second, then she darkened, brightness gone. She shook her head. "This is Volkoff. You know who he is, how powerful he is. Dad and I would have to run, maybe even leave the country…"

"And you would have to leave Chuck behind…"

Sarah nodded, fresh tears on her cheeks. "Yes."

"But look, if you care about him, if he is the man I think he must be for you to feel as you obviously do, shouldn't you give him some say in what happens to you, to you two? It sounds like he is a goner." Sarah paled. "Sorry, I mean a goner _for you_, Sarah. It's late, nearly morning, really. Why don't you try to get some rest and then, if you are willing, let's go and talk to your Chuck? Three heads are better than two, especially if one head is Mrs. Know-It-All's."

Sarah gazed off into the distance, clenching and unclenching her hands, then she reluctantly agreed. Carina walked her to the bedroom and got her to lay down. She put pulled the blankets over her friend. "Get some rest. I'm not saying this will all look good in the morning, but it will look better. You are Sarah Walker. I am Carina Miller. Chuck is Mrs. Know-It-All. We can fix this, somehow." Sarah nodded and a moment later she was asleep. Carina walked back to the living room and stretched out on the couch.

She hated to admit it, but she was not sure how this was going to get fixed.

xXx

As he watched the sunrise, Volkoff thought about the letters and answers he had read. This Mrs. Know-It-All maybe did not know it _all_, but she was no fool. The letter from Old Dog in Newark and its answer (the last Volkoff read) was stuck in Volkoff's head. But it was too late now. The wheels were in motion. He could contact Walker, but could not contact the other hitwoman. Since that was true, it was better to leave Walker in play. At least she would kill Mrs. Know-It-All quickly, mercifully, if possible. Walker did not make anyone suffer, not even the monsters - she was soft like that. Volkoff poured himself another drink. He toasted the rising sun and Mrs. Know-It-All. If she was watching the sunrise somewhere, it would likely be the last one she ever saw. Too bad.

Volkoff was considering mending his life. He could start today.

How much money did one man need anyway? Whatever the answer, he had far more than that.

How many empty bedrooms did one man need anyway?

One was enough.

xXx

Chuck woke up seated at his desk. At one point, he had given up on his thinking and gotten James' _The Ambassadors_. He had fallen asleep over its pages, quite literally, and drooled on James' words.

Knocking.

He got up and shook himself, trying to regain full consciousness. The knocking had gotten more insistent. He walked to the door and opened it.

It was Rebecca. And an almost equally tall, almost equally attractive red-headed woman. Rebecca looked...exhausted. Pale and worn. The other woman looked tired too but not to the degree that Rebecca did. That woman passed a glance up and down Chuck's length and puckered up, emitting a soft wolf-whistle. "Well, aren't you cute-ish…" Rebecca glared at her friend, who unconsciously took a small step back. "Sorry, girl. Just reacting."

Rebecca turned to face him. "May we come in, Chuck?"

"Um...sure...but how did you know where to find me?"

"I called Ellie. She told me."

"Oh, well," he said, walking back a couple of steps, "come in, please."

The two women entered and the other woman closed the door. Rebecca motioned to her. "Chuck, this is Carina Miller. My best friend."

Chuck had a sure feeling that he was about to get told off, to hear the tirade expected at the restaurant, the one that never came. But Sarah's face was soft. "May we sit down, Chuck? We need to talk."

"Please do." Carina put out her hand and Chuck shook it. "My pleasure, Carina."

"Oh, believe me, Chuck, the pleasure is all mine. I never imagined….Didn't know who could...well, it's all mine." She gestured at Rebecca. "She and I go way back."

They sat down, the two women on the love seat and Chuck in the armchair. The women put their purses on the floor. Dud waddled in and gave the women a long, low and mournful look. Then he walked past Carina to Rebecca. She began to rub his ears, gazing at him sadly. Rebecca and Dud seemed to commune with one another. Dud's tail, normally nothing but a hanging appendage, limper than the rest of him, wagged. After a moment, Dud licked her hand and rolled back toward his bed.

"Wow! That's as demonstrative as I have ever seen him. Normally, he doesn't get up unless it is time for one of his walks." Chuck paused, then changed his tone, becoming more serious. "So, what's this about?" He paused, shame-faced. "If it's about me lying to you, I can't tell you how sorry I am for that, Rebecca."

Carina winced. Sarah looked at her then back at Chuck. Sarah spoke: "Chuck, you are not the only one who has been lying. My name is not Rebecca…"

"I knew it!"

A small surprised smile, the first smile since she arrived, played on Rebecca's - on the woman's - face. "_Really_, Chuck?"

He nodded sharply. "I told Ellie so last night. I went over there with my tail between my legs, and let's just say she gave me a good talking to."

"Huh," Sarah commented softly, "she didn't give anything away on the phone. Of course, I think I woke her up." Sarah visibly gathered herself. Making herself hold his gaze, she went on. "My name is Sarah, Chuck, Sarah Walker. And my old job did involve me traveling for a company, for _The Company_. I used to be a Special Agent in the CIA. Carina here is a DEA agent. We worked together a number of times over the years, became friends."

xXx

Sarah expected anything but what she got. Instead of anger, or outrage or righteous indignation, Chuck just gave her a brief smile and a look of satisfaction. "Now, that I believe. There is no way a woman as amazing as you did not have an amazing job. And I've been puzzling about '_verboten_'."

"What?"

"When you repeated that the other day, it was like you were speaking German, not transliterating it, like me. But I don't think you noticed - and I noticed that. Your supposed travel company job _might_ have explained it, but...it didn't...Something about you..."

Sarah's eyes grew wide. "Really?"

"Yeah, you see, Sarah," he seemed to taste the name and to like it, "I may not be good at much, but I am a detail guy. I notice stuff. I remember things. I make mental notes. I'm not exactly _Mr. Know-It-All,_ but I catch...a lot. Retentive and observant. I think about things, about people." He paused and his next comment expressed surprise, surprised him, a realization. "I got my job for a reason. And I have been pretty sure you were not who you said you were. It didn't...add up..."

Sarah started to interrupt, but Chuck went on. "And I was pretty sure _I didn't care_ \- because I was pretty sure you were showing me the real you anyway, despite the fake name, the stories. And," he gulped just a little, "And I am crazy about the real you." Sarah's eyes grew wide and soft all at once. Her color returned and her posture shifted.

"Girl," Carina purred urgently, looking pointedly at Sarah, then pointedly at Chuck, "if you don't kiss that man's face, I am going to do it for you."

That was the only preamble Chuck got.

Sarah launched herself at Chuck. His armchair tipped over backward with them both in it and without either caring or even noticing. Sarah was kissing Chuck and he was kissing her back.

Carina waved her arms in the air, smirking happily. "Well, hell, _hallelujah_!"

xXx

Sarah pulled her lips away from Chuck's well-kissed ones. Her lips were the same, she knew; she could feel their gentle throb. She looked seriously, shyly into his eyes. "But there's more I have to tell you, Chuck. A lot more."

He gave her that smile, the one she then and there claimed full ownership of - her smile, hers alone.

"I knew there would be," Chuck said, returning her gaze. "There really had to be. I figured that much out last night."

* * *

A/N2: Always worth remembering that Chuck is Intersect-y by nature. Take a breath - things get pretty crazy after this. (I know, I know.) This shorter chapter was interludial.

Thanks for reading and especially for the comments. More thoughts, reactions?


	7. Chapter 7

AU novella. An advice columnist happens upon an arresting stranger, resulting in dangerous feelings, confusions, and errors. A romantic dramedy.

* * *

A/N1: I love the economy and foreshortening required in the novella, the challenge of it. Definitely why I keep being drawn back to the form.

We are now entering our final two chapters. Time jumps a bit; scenes shift fast; details count. (They have all along, of course; there's little looseness permitted in the form, no stretching the chatter or action thin. _No dawdling. There's no dawdling in a novella._)

Don't own _Chuck._

* * *

**Chuck vs. Mrs. Know-It-All**

CHAPTER SEVEN

* * *

Carina got up and helped Sarah and Chuck disentangle from each other (reluctantly) and from the chair (less reluctantly). When all three people were seated again, Sarah realized Carina had contrived to rearrange them; Carina was sitting in the now-upright chair, and Sarah and Chuck were on the loveseat. Carina shot Sarah a secret grin; Sarah grinned back.

Chuck looked at Sarah. "This isn't _just_ about your past, your past job, is it? Something else is going on, something right now?"

Sarah steeled herself. "Right, but it is about my past, but not just about my past." She glanced at Carina.

Carina gave her a small _go-ahead _gesture, then stood. "I don't know about you two, but I need coffee. Obviously, I don't need _beauty_ sleep, on that score, I could be forever awake...but I sometimes do need plain old sleep and I haven't had much. So, coffee, instead. Is there a place nearby, Chuck?"

Chuck gave her quick, precise directions to the nearest shop and she promised to return with coffee for all. She left the apartment.

In the wake of her leaving, Sarah reached out and carefully took Chuck's hand. "So, Chuck, I was a CIA Agent, but my job was not really...amazing...Most of the time it was unpleasant, often it was dangerous, and, frankly, with only a few exceptions, I didn't like the people I worked with and liked the people I was forced to interact with even less. But I guess all that is not so important right now. I guess a lot of the details aren't. What is important is the specific kind of work I sometimes did…" Sarah got up, releasing Chuck's hand, and took a few steps away from him, then turned to face him. "I was a trained CIA assassin, Chuck, and I was not merely trained - I put my skills to work. I killed people." Sarah stopped, every nerve in her alive, waiting for him to run, or for his gaze to frost over, or his posture to recoil from her. She waited to be rejected, condemned.

Chuck looked steadily into her eyes. In a soft voice softened more by his eyes, he said, "God, that must have been awful for you. How did you survive it?"

She blinked a couple of times, trying to process his reaction, to make sense of the words. They were English; she knew their dictionary definitions; she had for a moment no idea what he meant. And then it came slowly into focus.

He had not asked why, he had not asked for details. He commiserated with her, thought first of her, of the cost of her life for her. She walked back to him and took his hand, intensifying her earlier grip on it. She breathed out an eternally long sigh. "Thank you, Chuck. Yes, it was awful. I did awful things. And, what you said last night, about how you never really chose it, it just kind of happened? That was true for me too. I...joined...the CIA young. I didn't understand what I was choosing; I chose, in a way, but in ignorance. I was molded, almost from the moment I joined, into an agent-a person-who could do..._that job_. And I could do it, Chuck, and I did it for a time until I couldn't possibly stomach any more of it, and I quit. Well, I quit the CIA." She paused and closed her eyes for a second.

xXx

Chuck watched Sarah close her eyes. _Sarah. _That was right, that was her name.

He felt a trembling in her hand, and he was suddenly and fully aware of the titanic effort she must be making, telling him what she was telling him. Revealing all this pain.

He wondered for a second, as he often did, because of his own life and because of the letters he responded to almost daily, why people's estimate of themselves and their reality turned out to be so distant from one another. And then he knew part of the answer: _We all think we know ourselves better than other people know us. That's true a lot of the time, but not all of the time. Importantly, we cannot at the moment evaluate the significance of our self-evaluations. Some self-knowledge comes third-personally or after the fact._

Chuck discerned the chilled self-loathing beneath the words of Sarah's story, carried in her tone. He knew that Sarah could not simultaneously feel that self-loathing and understand what it meant: that somehow she had been able to do a loathsome job without becoming a loathsome person - that she had held onto her humanity when everything and apparently almost everyone around her demanded she discard it.

The self-loathing and shame she so obviously felt, though they made her damn herself, revealed that she was not damned. Far from it. Words came unbidden into Chuck's mind: "And Peter went out, and wept bitterly": A pertinent example from an old book.

Sarah opened her eyes and spoke again. Chuck gave her his full attention.

xXx

"Before I was...recruited for the CIA, I was raised by my dad. My dad was a con man, Chuck. He swindled people. He involved me in the cons when I was little, and I grew up as a con. His "side-swindler" he called me-until I understood what it meant. I eventually came to understand that we were not, as Dad sometimes said, "just playing little games", we were hurting people, stealing, even if in some sense they gave us their money.

"I grew up thinking that pretenses and lies were more normal than realities and truths. It was upside-down. I kept at it though, Chuck, even though I knew it was wrong. He was my dad. It was all I knew. I was his little girl. And when I went to the Farm, the CIA training school, it did not feel so much like my life had changed, it just felt like my cons had gone...international...and darker, become more dangerous."

xXx

Sarah slowed down and took a deep breath. She had to keep going. "And that puts me in a position to explain what is happening now. After I quit the CIA, my Dad ran a con on Alexei Volkoff…"

Chuck gave a low, soft whistle. "Wow, even living in my papier mâché cocoon, I know that name…"

"Then you will understand what I am about to tell you." Sarah swallowed. "Volkoff caught my dad conning him and took Dad prisoner, he was going to kill Dad. To prevent it, I had to agree to become Volkoff's temporary hitman...hitwoman...you know, assassin. I agreed to do five jobs for him.

"In exchange, he would keep my dad alive, and free him when I finished. I have done four of the five jobs, Chuck, all four mobsters who were rivals or competitors of Volkoff's. But now he has assigned me my fifth and final job. _You, Chuck_. Or, rather, Mrs. Know-It-All. I am supposed to kill Mrs. Know-It-All. I knew that last night before I knew that you are her…"

Chuck gave her a puzzled look. "But why on earth would Volkoff put out a hit on _me_, on Mrs. Know-It-All? A harmless drudge? I have never met Volkoff. I have a bunch of unpaid library fines, but I don't think I have ever gotten any closer than that to...illegal activity. I just don't...Wait a minute, Volkoff is a Russian ex-pat, right?"

Sarah nodded, watched him thinking. He was beautiful when he was thinking. He was beautiful when he was not thinking. Chuck let go of her hand carefully, then crossed the room and grabbed his laptop. He turned the desk chair toward Sarah and sat down in it. He started typing. Sarah let herself relax a little, and actually look around. She had told him. Up until now, she had focused only on Chuck and Carina, on what she needed to say. Now she considered the apartment. She took in the profusion of books, piled and towered everywhere. The movie posters on the walls. It was cluttered but not messy - the outward and visible sign of Chuck's mind.

"I wonder…" Sarah refocused on Chuck when he spoke. "I got this letter from someone who used the name 'From Russia with Love?' I mean it seems crazy, but there has to be a reason Volkoff would want to kill Mrs. Know-It-All, and Volkoff, I am sure, does not know me. He doesn't want to kill me _per se_, he wants to kill her, the woman I pretend to be..." Chuck had been staring into space as he spoke, but when he heard his own last words, he shot Sarah a bemused glance: "Um, you know what I mean…Let me read you the letter and my answer."

xXx

Carina regretted turning down the cardboard drink carrier. Managing three cups and a bag of pastries was proving tricky. Especially since her shoulder was still stiff and sore. Luckily, she was almost back at Chuck's building. She looked around, habit, and although she gave no sign, she noticed something that made her spy sense tingle. Across the street was a van. Not just any van. It was the same van she now remembered seeing outside of Sarah's. She continued walking, doing nothing to suggest it, but she kept the van in view. It seemed empty, but then she noticed the top of a balding head, tufted with wisps of blondish hair. Someone was in the van and trying, poorly, to hide.

Before she and Sarah left Sarah's apartment, they had chosen weapons. She had borrowed a pistol and silencer from Sarah. The pistol and silencer were in her purse, hanging from her shoulder. Sarah's pistol and silencer were in her purse upstairs. They had brought extra clips too, a couple in Carina's purse, a couple in Sarah's. Carina strolled into the building, waiting to hurry her pace slightly when she knew she was out of view of the van. It looked like Volkoff had doubled down on killing Mrs. Know-It-All. Who knew an advice columnist could cause such a ruckus?

xXx

Lester peeked above the dashboard alongside Jeff, two weird meercats. The tall redhead had gone inside, carrying coffees and a bag of goodies. Evidently, Walker either had not ended Mrs. Know-It-All or she really was a stone-cold killer, celebrating on the scene with coffee and pastry. No, Lester's instinct last night was all against Walker killing Mrs. Know-It-All. Lester had seen her with him outside the restaurant, had seen her face as she walked up to him, her fond smile as she watched him talk to himself before she drew near. No, Walker might be kissing Mrs. Know-It-All - kissing Bartowski - but she was not killing him (not _that_ way, anyway).

Lester got out of his seat and picked his way through the gadgets and gizmos and garbage in the back of the van. He had stowed something away that Jeff did not realize was there. He grabbed the long, thin, soft-fabric case. Jeff had turned around in his seat and was looking blankly at what Lester was holding. Lester took off his jacket, then took off his shoulder holster and the pistol. Jeff was still watching.

Lester gestured to the steering wheel. "C'mon, Jeff. Take the van around to behind the building next to this one. When we circled around for a while earlier, I saw a fire escape."

Jeff rotated back around and started the van. It belched blue smoke for a minute, sounded like it was choking, coughing up its carburetor - a heavy smoker hacking after a two pack night - and then Jeff steered up the block and down the narrow alley that took them behind the buildings. Lester had come back to the front of the van and was giving Jeff instructions on what to do. He had Jeff bring the van to a stop underneath the fire escape.

The escape ended well above ground; it had a ladder that could be lowered to allow someone coming down to get to the ground, but normally the ladder was up, to prevent non-residents, thieves, from using it to gain access to the upper-story windows.

Lester got out and slung the long case over his shoulder, checking to see if the coast was clear. He went to the rear of the van and climbed up on top of it. From there, he could almost reach the ladder. He took a deep breath and sprang into the air. He got hold of the ladder and it came down, lowering him back to the van faster than he expected. There was a hollow metal thump when he dented the top of the van.

Jeff had gotten out and been watching. He smiled and slow-clapped, beaming at Lester's antics.

"Stop it, Jeffrey. We are being sneaky!" Jeff looked hurt, dully chastized. Lester waved him up and Jeff, after falling off the back of the van twice, finally got atop it. Lester started to climb the ladder when he realized his weight was pressing the ladder into the top of the van, denting it even more. He glanced nervously at Jeff-it was Jeff's van, after all, Jeff's home since Jeff lived in it-but Jeff was staring up not down, concerned with where they were going, not where they had been. Lester climbed. Jeff followed, unknowingly pressing the ladder deeper still into the roof of the van.

xXx

When Carina came back into the apartment, she found Sarah leaning against Chuck. He was reclining on the love seat and she was reclining on him, her head against his shoulder. In front of them, on the coffee table, was an open laptop. They were talking, whispering, really. Their tone was serious, but their faces blissful. Carina gave a snort.

At the sound, Chuck let his head hang back off the couch so that he was looking at Carina upside-down. Sarah pushed herself up - but not off of Chuck.

"Hey, Carina," Sarah said, talking over her blush, "we were trying to figure out why Volkoff wants Mrs. Know-It-All dead. We think we have an idea. Since Volkoff ordered the hit on her, not Chuck, it seems like it has to be because of the column. Chuck remembered a recent letter…" Sarah at that point got off of Chuck and he sat up. "Go ahead, Chuck, you can explain the rest."

"Yeah, so I did a little hacking - software engineer in college, nerd for a lifetime - and I found that the letter was from Claudia Veragona, a swimsuit model here in LA. She's in online photographs with Volkoff at various parties. She sent the email and I believe it was about Volkoff and her. Sarah says he is often a tyrant, and in his personal not just his criminal life. She thinks my exchange with Claudia must have pissed Volkoff off. I never imagined I could give advice that would get me killed. I didn't think I had any advice in me that good - or that bad."

Carina put down the coffees and the bag as she listened. She turned and locked the door. Still, listening, she walked to the living room window and stood, looking out.

Sarah blush left her and a concerned look claimed her face. "What, Carina?"

"Well, that all sounds plausible, or as plausible as anything in this bassackwards rom-com is," she shot Sarah a tight smile, "but I saw a van outside, a van I also saw last night outside your place, Sarah. Any chance Volkoff called in a second hitter?" Carina scanned all she could see through the window. She could see the building next door and its rooftop. Everything seemed ordinary, nothing out of place.

"I don't know. It's not like I am taking more time than usual. He knows I am thorough."

"Well, my gut tells me something is up. I am going to go back down and take a look around. You two stay here. Keep him safe, Sarah. I have my phone; I'll call if everything looks okay. Then you two come down. We need to move Chuck and then we need a plan."

xXx

Lester stepped onto the rooftop. The building was old. The roof was covered in ancient asphalt, already beginning to soften in the early morning sun. Lester's shoes made a sucking sound as he walked across it. He heard Jeff gasp from behind. Lester stopped but did not turn around. "What, Jeff?"

"It's the Pits!"

"What are you talking about?"

"You know, the melted dinosaurs!"

Lester closed his eyes and silently begged a host of strange gods to grant him patience.

"You know, Lester, at _The Bra Place_."

"You mean _La Brea Tar Pits_, Jeff?"

"Yeah, yeah. These melted dinosaurs are sticking to my feet, Lester. It's gross."

Lester did not have time to unravel this confusion. "Just suck it up, Jeff. The dinosaurs don't care anymore."

Lester went on, hearing Jeff's sticky steps and beneath-his-breath muttering behind his own sticky steps. _Step, suck, step, suck_. Lester got to the opposite side of the roof and he knelt down. He opened the case. He heard Jeff gulp behind him.

A sniper's rifle, new and gleaming. Scope and stand and silencer. Lester felt like Wile E. Coyote with a fresh delivery from Acme. He laughed softly at the thought of his favorite cartoon. He took out the stand and unfolded it. He then got the rifle out and the scope, attaching the scope to it. He screwed on the silencer. It took a few moments, but eventually, the weapon was ready.

Using his naked eyes, Lester looked across at Bartowski's building, counting up and over to find the right apartment, then he re-positioned the stand, toyed with its height until it was where he wanted it, and he locked the rifle in place. He lowered his head and looked through the scope and saw nothing. Sighing, he pulled his head back and took the caps off the scope's ends. He aimed the rifle at one of Bartowski's windows as he looked through the scope. He could hear Jeff breathing beside him, even more heavily than normal, wheezing.

The scope showed Lester a window, evidently the window to Bartowski's bedroom. Everything in the scope was bright; the depth of field remarkable. He moved the rifle horizontally to the next window. He confronted blonde hair. Walker was standing, her arms wrapped around (a man who had to be) Bartowski, kissing him passionately. Bartowski's arms held her, squeezing her against him as he returned her kiss with equal passion. Lester felt a pang of anticipatory regret: they looked so lost in each other. Happy, even. It was a shame, odd, to have to kill Bartowski at such a moment.

Lester rested his finger on the trigger guard. He slowed his breathing. The couple rotated just as slowly, still kissing. As they rotated, Lester could see a silver pistol in Walker's hand, glinting in the sunlight. It was resting flat against Bartowski's back, forgotten, evidently, by both of them. They seemed to remember only each other. Lester blinked and made himself refocus, but the couple continued their slow turn, and now it was Walker's back that Lester could see, her blonde hair. She again was between him and Bartowski. It might not matter; the rifle was powerful; he could kill her and kill Bartowski with the same shot, two birds, one stone...

"Lester, hey, Lester," Jeff's voice was thick, "don't do this, Lester. We can find another way to get your star to yank my wagon. I've been thinking - I play the keytar. Maybe we should quit Volkoff and start a band? This - what you are going to do - this ain't right, Lester."

Lester lifted his head and looked at his friend. Jeff's usually dull eyes seemed clear and unhappy. That look and his own anticipatory regret froze Lester for a second.

xXx

Carina checked her pistol on the empty elevator. Satisfied, she put it back in her purse but did not snap the purse closed. She got off the elevator and walked outside. The van was gone. She looked up the street, into the distance: nothing. She looked down the street, into the distance: nothing. She stood for several minutes, watching and waiting. Still, nothing. She reached carefully into her purse and got her phone.

"Walker, it's clear. Bring your man downstairs. Let's roll."

xXx

Lester's lips compressed into a thin line. He was not going to lose his nerve now. Not this close. He put his eye back to the scope. _There was no one there_. He had missed his chance. Grumbling to himself, he took the rifle off the stand. He heard Jeff blow out a breath in relief.

xXx

Sarah stood beside Chuck on the elevator, holding his hand. The whole situation was insane, unreal.

She was _with _the man she had been tasked to kill. She would do anything she had to do to protect him instead, to keep him whole and alive. She had no idea how this would end, how it could end...happily...but, crazy to say, she was, at that very moment, happy. The last couple of days had given her a sense of what her future might be, given it shape and form: not definite shape or definite form, nothing final, but it was no longer simply blank. She was no longer facing freedom from Volkoff, from her past, but she now hoped for freedom to be something, someone else. Not to be someone alien to her, but someone she had been meant to be all along, before her life had been placed on false rails, her decisions largely stolen from her, her choices horribly constrained. She felt Chuck squeeze her hand - and she thought about how good it felt to touch and be touched by him. She could be the someone she had in mind, she could be that woman, become that woman, _with_ him.

They got off the elevator and joined Carina outside. Through the window, Carina's posture told Sarah that she thought everything was still safe. Still, as a precaution, Sarah let Chuck's hand fall from hers as she gave him a smile. She wanted to be ready if something happened.

The three of them walked to Sarah's car and got in. No incident. Sarah pulled out and into traffic. Although she checked in her rearview mirror, she did not notice the plain grey sedan that joined traffic several cars back.

Carina spoke from the back seat. "So, Sarah, Chuck, do we have a plan?"

Chuck looked at Sarah. Sarah answered. "I think you are right. We need to find a safe place to hole up, at least for the day. Once we get there and get some rest, we can worry about the next step.

"I didn't explain this last night, Carina, since we talked about...other things, but have no idea where Volkoff is holding Dad. Volkoff texts me the morning of the day when I get to see Dad, and he is already at Volkoff's when Volkoff calls. It's never the same day; there's no pattern, and so I have never seen Dad arrive. He leaves after I am gone, maybe right away, maybe later, but always there's a group of cars that leave and Dad could be in any of them.

"Volkoff made it clear to me that if he found me looking for Dad, or even believed I was, he would kill him. So, I don't have any idea where to find him. It might be that our best chance would be to go at Volkoff head on. There're men around the house, and those two creepy guys, Jeff and Lester, but if we could get to Volkoff, we might be able to force him to give us Dad. But I don't know how that plays out from there, short of killing Volkoff ourselves." Sarah glanced at Chuck and saw his jaw clench. "I don't want to have to do that, except as a last resort."

"Well, here's a hotel we might use." Carina was looking at her phone. "Motel Six. Cheap, but It looks like a decent place. It's on the edge of town. Take a while to get there. No other buildings right next to it. Some nearby but none adjacent. Room doors seem to be on the interior. Two floors. The kind of place that exists on every highway exit in the country. A needle in a haystack. I have alternative IDs if we need me to get the room."

"That sounds good. I could use some downtime," Sarah said, looking at Carina in the rearview mirror. Carina flicked her eyes toward Chuck and then winked at Sarah as she gave her lips and exaggerated lick. Sarah felt the blush creep up her neck and all over her face. Carina laughed soundlessly at her.

xXx

Forrest was in no hurry. As much as she loved the kill, she loved the lead-up as much, maybe more. Anticipation, dalliance, a cat with a mouse. Foreplay. She had been parking her car when she saw Walker leave Bartowski's building with him. They had joined Carina Miller. All unexpected developments. Walker would make this a true challenge. Forrest had always envied her and her reputation. If she could kill Walker while killing Bartowski, not only would a cause of envy be eliminated, but when word of it made the rounds, it would make Forrest even more sought after, and she could start demanding more money per hit.

Miller was a wildcard. Forrest had vaguely known that Miller was Walker's friend, and it had always seemed an odd pairing to her. What Forrest knew of Miller had suggested to her that she and Miller would be buddies, _sympatico_, but on the one mission they had shared, Carina had seemed wholly uninterested in getting to know Forrest, even hostile to her. _Weird. No accounting for bad taste_.

Forrest did not try to close the distance on Walker's car. She was close enough for now. And the new developments meant that Forrest would have to work up to the main event slowly. But that was just fine with her. More anticipation, caresses, foreplay. Consummation would be all the sweeter.

xXx

Chuck texted Morgan, asking him to check on Dud. After that, Chuck kept sneaking glances at Sarah, thrilled to keep discovering that she really was there beside him each time he did, but thrilled also by the small smile that had not left her face for long since they had talked.

He was having a hard time understanding it all, but he was sure of one thing. He had real feelings for Sarah and he trusted her completely. He just did. Brute fact. Nothing she had told him had changed that - except to intensify the feelings and deepen the trust.

His feelings for Sarah their sheer intensity, stole his breath. He had liked Jill. He had told himself, although never her, that he was in love with her. He now knew - beyond any shadow of a doubt - that he had not loved Jill. Saying it to himself had not made it so.

What he felt for Sarah dwarfed what he felt for Jill. An Easy-Bake Oven compared to a blazing sun. Perhaps it was too early to think it, certainly too early to say it (was it?), but what he felt for Sarah was what he mistakenly believed he felt for Jill. He had started feeling it at the theater; it guided his hand as he sketched her. He was not sure what direction his life would take in a day or two, or even if he would live through the next day or two. All he knew was that if he lived through them, he wanted to do it with her - and to keep living all his days with her. She..._actualized_...him. He had more than potential, was more than potential.

Chuck reached out and took Sarah's hand in his, kissing the back of it lightly, repeatedly. Devotedly.

Carina blew out a mock-disgusted breath. "Jesus, we _so_ need to get you two a room. I'm too young and impressionable to be watching this Austen smut." Despite her words, Carina's tone expressed only amused pleasure.

xXx

Chuck watched as Carina came back to the car with two room key cards. She handed one to Sarah and kept one. Chuck was confused. "Don't I get a room?"

"Oh, you have a room, Chuck. You are sleeping with Sarah."

Chuck looked at Sarah. She was watching his face, waiting. He smiled shyly. She smiled shyly. Carina grumbled. "Stop, you two. I feel like a bad chaperone on a prom date. Oh, by the way, the motel only had two rooms ready on the top floor, since we're checking in early. One had two twin beds, the other a queen. I took the room with two beds. You can thank me later, Sarah." With that, Carnia got out of the car, her purse in her hand, and walked back into the hotel.

In the silence after Carina shut the car door, Sarah gave Chuck a serious look. "If you don't want to..._share_...I understand, Chuck. If it is too much…"

He reached out to her, putting his hand under the chin that had dipped as she finished speaking. "This is completely comfortable on my end, Sarah. But I understand too...Nothing will happen that we do not _both_ want to happen. No hurry, no expectations."

They got their things, Sarah's purse, Chuck's shoulder bag, and headed inside, holding hands.

xXx

Forrest drove by the Motel Six parking lot and saw Walker and Bartowski walk in holding hands. She smirked to herself. Did Walker _like _Mrs. Know-It-All? This just kept getting better. She parked in the lot next door, a good vantage point. She grabbed a duffle bag from the passenger side floor and took out her phone, her binoculars, and a notebook. It was time to think this through, blow by blow.

She was going to turn the Motel Six into a Deep Six.

xXx

Jeff drove the van past the Motel Six. Lester looked at the parking lot carefully, the tracker beeping in his hands. He saw Walker's car. He directed Jeff to park in the parking lot next door. The parking lot of a Buy More. It was time to come up with a plan. Time to finish this. He would do it this time. He would not get distracted from his destiny.

xXx

The doorbell rang.

Claudia answered the door at her apartment. She ordered a late lunch and was expecting it to be delivered. When she opened the door, Volkoff was standing there, her order of Chinese food somehow in his hands. "May we talk, Claudia?" His expression was peculiar.

She meant to say _no_, really she did, but his showing up, especially like that, with her order, was so unexpected that she instead stepped aside and let him in, her heart all jumpy.

* * *

A/N2: And so, to our finish.

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	8. Chapter 8

AU novella. An advice columnist happens upon an arresting stranger, resulting in dangerous feelings, confusions, and errors. A romantic dramedy.

* * *

A/N1: The final chapter of this little tale.

Don't own _Chuck. _

* * *

**Chuck vs. Mrs. Know-It-All**

CHAPTER EIGHT

* * *

Lester shut off the tracker. He put Jeff's binoculars against his face, looking at the Motel Six and its surroundings.

One tactic would be to get inside - but that would also mean that he and Jeff would be pitted against Walker, Bartowski and the redhead. Those odds weren't good: three against two. Lester looked at Jeff..against one-and-a-half...against one.

Yes, a direct attack was a bad idea.

The rifle was better, if Lester could just figure out where to set it up, out of sight. He lowered the binoculars. They were in the parking lot of a big box store, a Buy More. It would be a long shot, literally, but if he and Jeff could get on top of the Buy More undetected, Lester _could_ take the shot from there. He had been practicing with the rifle for a while on the weekends when Jeff visited his mother at the State Pen. Guns made Jeff nervous, as recent events had shown.

Lester was able to make the shot; he believed it. The question was whether Bartowski was in a room whose window faced the Buy More. It looked like half the rooms faced the Buy More and the other half faced away, were on the other side of the Motel Six. Lester needed to know or figure out Bartowski's room number and locate his room. If his room were on the other side, the hope of using the rifle would be dashed - there was no possible hidden vantage point on that side.

They could try to get on the Buy More roof and then use the scope to find Bartowski, if his room was on the right side of the Motel, but that would be a waste of effort if it was not. No, the best plan was to find the room number if possible, then to get on top of the Buy More if a shot was possible. Of course, there was another obvious problem. Even if Bartowski was in a room facing the right way, if Bartowski closed his curtains he would effectively blind Lester's rifle. That was a risk Lester could not see how to avoid.

As he examined the Motel more carefully through the binoculars, a head of blond hair beneath a baseball cap rose into view, not at the Motel, but nearby. For a second, Lester thought it was Walker, and then he knew it was not. The woman carried herself somewhat as Walker did - grace and coiled power on her walk - but the set of her shoulders was different and the nature of her stride different. Lester flashed on Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Terminator. That was it: a hardness, a machined 'whirr' to her movements, not quite or not fully _human_. She was studying the Motel as she walked toward the dumpster.

Lester lowered the binoculars. He had a sudden conviction that there was another piece on the board, another powerful piece. Complications, always complications.

xXx

Forrest got out of her car and walked toward the edge of the parking lot. She had a couple of empty styrofoam cups in one hand, and she aimed the dumpster on the edge of the parking lot. She was studying the distance between her parking lot and the Motel Six, and hoping to perhaps get a glimpse of Bartowski in a window.

She got to the dumpster without catching sight of Bartowski, but she did have a better sense of the distance from her car to the Motel and of the patch of uneven, grassy ground between the two parking lots. She threw the cups in the dumpster and walked back. If Walker did what she should have done, she took Bartowski to high ground in the Motel, to the second floor. Since Miller was with her, that presented a new tactical challenge.

Given the hand-holding Forrest witnessed, Walker was almost certain to be wherever Bartowski was. But Miller might be anywhere. Of course, there would be both an elevator and stairs, and if Miller were standing watch, she would have a hard time guarding each ingress. To station herself between them was to yield each halfway. But to station herself on one would be the yield the other completely.

As far as Forrest knew, the only threats that Walker and Miller knew to worry about might come in the form of Volkoff's men, perhaps eventually sent to finish Walker's unfinished work. And, knowing Walker, she would expect Volkoff to give her time to plan. So, even though Walker and Miller were obviously wary, they had no reason to expect Forrest - or any other immediate threat. That was her big advantage. The question was how to use it. She laughed to herself. _It's fun to be Mrs. Know-It-All myself, while my targets are ignorant. _

She got back in her car. She thought she caught a movement behind her, and she glanced into her rearview mirror. She saw various cars and trucks, an old van with a dented-looking top. But nothing noteworthy. She went back to studying her problem.

xXx

Carina parted with Sarah and Chuck in the hallway. Sarah knew they were all tired and emotionally drained. She certainly was almost too tired to feel the happiness she felt. Almost. Even as tired as she was, she could not keep the smile off her face.

Carina waved to them and ducked through her door quickly, leaving Chuck and Sarah standing outside theirs. Sarah had the keycard in her hand. Chuck sidestepped out of the way so that she could unlock the door and lead them inside.

The room contained nothing surprising. A desk, a tv, an uncomfortable-looking armchair, and a large bed. There was a small refrigerator and a small in-room coffee maker. The bathroom fixtures were old and plain, but clean. Since neither Sarah nor Chuck had any luggage to situate, they just stood there for a moment, side by side, both failing to avoid staring at the queen-sized elephant in the room.

Sarah felt almost bashful and unsure of herself. Desire and exhaustion were both tugging at her. She could tell that Chuck felt the same. He put his hand on her shoulder carefully and looked at her. "Why don't you take the bathroom first? I'm guessing we will both feel better after a shower. I saw a laundry room down the hall. I have some quarters and…"

"No, Chuck. Do not go _anywhere_ without me, ever. If I take a shower, _you stay in the room_. Is that clear?" She did not mean to issue an order, but the thought of him unprotected terrified her. She did not know if they were in immediate danger or not, but she was going to assume it until proven otherwise. She reached for his hand and pulled it to her face. She kissed his palm and then the inside of his wrist, and added, softening her tone. "I'm sorry, Chuck, but I just...I just found you. I can't lose you. Do you understand?"

"I do, Sarah. I feel the same way, so please, if something happens, don't do anything that would make me lose you. Do you understand?"

"I do, Chuck. And, thanks, I will take that shower now, I think." She squeezed his hand and went into the bathroom. She closed the door and started to undress. She turned on the water and stepped in. She felt better immediately, and she smiled as she put her head beneath the water.

xXx

Chuck heard the shower start. He took off his shoulder bag. He sat down at the desk. For a moment he simply sat still, breathing. He closed his eyes and listened to the sound of the water. After a moment, he opened his bag and took out his laptop. He called up his Mrs. Know-It-All email and started looking through the new letters. He skimmed along until his eyes snagged on one.

* * *

_Dear Mrs. Know-It-All,_

_I met a man. We haven't been together for a long time but he is wonderful. When I am with him, I do not feel like I am merely the person I've been, or even that I'm the person I've been plus the person I currently am. I feel like I'm _more, _li__ke I am moving, becoming the person I hoped to be, the person I never really thought I 'd be. _

_Does that mean I love him? I have the strongest feeling for him but we have not been together for a long time. _

_How does a person know she's in love? Is there a special tingle? Any observable physical change? (I blush a lot now.) Would a mood ring help? Tarot cards? An MRI? Is there a book I can read? _

_If anyone can answer my question, it is _you_, Mrs. Know-It-All. I am counting on you. _

_Unsure in Utica_

* * *

Chuck finished the letter and laughed softly, shaking his head. The human condition. He realized the shower was off, and had been for a little while. He heard the bathroom door open and heard Sarah speak his name. The sound of her saying it made him ache. He closed his eyes for a second, savoring that ache, deep and sweet. He turned around in the desk chair.

Sarah was standing wrapped in a towel. Her hair, towel-dried and then combed, was still damp and darker than it was when it was dry. She gave him a languid smile, warm and full. She walked to him, bent down, and gave him a quick kiss, then she went back and stood beside the bed. She unwrapped herself and stood before him, looking at him.

Her gaze held no challenge, no smirk, no request for admiration - it was sheerly vulnerable and full of hope. "Take your shower, Chuck. I'll be waiting." She pulled down the bedclothes and slid into the bed, keeping that same gaze on him the whole time.

Chuck walked to her and bent down, giving her a quick kiss. She squirmed a little under the covers and smiled. They both sighed and laughed. He went into the bathroom and took his turn beneath the water.

xXx

A short while later, Chuck emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. He walked to the bed. Sarah was there waiting, her eyes on him.

He considered her for a moment, then dropped his towel, stood for a moment as she had when she dropped hers, returning her look. He then slid beneath the covers beside her.

She scooched toward him, conformed her naked body to his. He moved his arm and she lifted her head, allowing him to take her even more into his embrace, her head cradled against his shoulder. She closed her eyes and gave a long, slow sigh, putting one leg over him.

"I called Carina while you were in the shower, Chuck. She says she can't sleep, after all, so she's taking the first shift, keeping watch. We can sleep if we want." She opened her eyes, waiting for a reaction.

Chuck's face did not register a reaction, but she moved her leg in response to a reaction registered elsewhere, and she gave him a small smile. "Too fast?" She asked, gently teasing, moving her leg against him subtly, so slowly. He trembled head to toe in response to her movements.

"I don't think serendipity has a schedule," Chuck whispered in a shaky voice just before Sarah covered his mouth with hers.

xXx

The afternoon passed slowly in the van, baking in the sunlight. Baking. Baked. Night was coming. The van was cooling.

Jeff and Lester had retreated to the rear of the van, both to escape the rays of the sun and to keep the woman still seated in the grey sedan from noticing them. It was stifling back there, the air thick and heavy, torturous. Jeff had made the atmosphere toxic: he had taken off his shoes and socks, and was now laboriously trying to trim his thick toenails with a penknife.

Lester watched it in repelled fascination, sure at any moment Jeff's hand would slip and he would lose a toe. Lester finally forced himself to look away.

Time was weighing on him. He needed to do something but he was worried about alerting the new woman to their presence. So far, she seemed so intent on what she was facing, the Motel Six, that she had hardly looked behind her.

Lester crept back to the front of the van and carefully raised his head until he could just peer over the dashboard. The woman picked that moment to get out of her car. She pulled her hat down and zipped the light jacket she had put on. She quickly walked across the parking lot, falling in with a group of women who were heading inside the motel.

Lester realized the women were maids; they all had on matching uniforms. They did not enter the Motel through the front doors, but used another entrance along the side of the building. The woman in the hat began talking with them, laughing, and she entered with them. She was inside! Lester did not expect her to make her attempt at Bartowski immediately. She would wait. It made more sense to do it after dark. Still, the woman now controlled the center of the board. Lester needed to tilt the board and hope the sliding pieces were rearranged to favor him.

He climbed into the passenger seat. "Start the van, Jeff." Jeff dropped his knife and scrambled forward to get into the driver's seat. Barefoot, he started the van.

"Where are we going, Lester?"

"Around the Buy More, to the back."

Jeff guided the gasping van around the building, to a much smaller rear lot. There was a loading bay there and - Lester closed his eyes when he saw it in thanks - a ladder that could be used to access the rooftop.

He was going to have to hope that Bartowski's room was on the right side of the building and that he left his windows open. He was not going to try to invade the Motel and face down _three_ women and Mrs. Know-It-All. Better to hope for successful action at a distance. He believed it would work out, it would all work out. He was Lester, after all; he was destined for greater things. And Jeff, Jeff too.

xXx

Forrest found it easy to con the maids. She told them she was a guest and needed some extra shampoo and towels, and they did not question her. They let her into the employee locker room and from there to the storage room, and they dug out the soap and towels she asked for. She accepted them with a pretense of gratitude and left the maids there, stepping out into the hallway.

A maid's cart was standing there unattended, with a clipboard stationed on top of it. Forrest put down the towels on a stack of towels and dropped the soap in a box of soaps. She picked up the clipboard.

She scanned the list of guest names, not really interested in the names themselves but in the arrival times. She saw the right time - two rooms. Those were the rooms, she was sure. She flipped through the other pages on the clipboard and found one that had the room layout of the motel. The rooms were on the second floor, toward the front end of the building, slightly closer to the stairwell than the elevator. Forrest unclipped that page from the board, and stuffed the page in her jacket pocket. As she did, she noticed that there was a key card on the top of the cart. It had been hidden from view by the clipboard. _Maybe a coincidence, maybe not._ She palmed the card and hurried down the hallway.

She stopped at the door to a room beneath one of the two she took to contain Bartowski. She swiped the keycard, holding her breath. The small light on the handle went from red to green. Grinning, _it's all working out, _she stepped inside and closed the door, pushing the interior bolt against it.

The room was cleaned and ready for the next guest. Forrest stood still and looked at the ceiling. She listened closely. She thought could perhaps hear a faint, rhythmic sound. She smirked. Perhaps Mrs. Know-It-All was knowing the Ice Queen, melting her. Perhaps. That hand-holding meant something. How did Walker end up holding her target's hand - for real? The woman was supposed to be a killer. Walker certainly did not seem to be leading her sheep to the slaughter. _My job._

Shaking her head, Forrest aimed a cruel smile toward the ceiling before pulling her pistol from the back waist of her pants and her silencer from a front pocket. She had extra magazines in her jacket pocket. It was nearly dark outside. She closed her curtains. Fondling her pistol, she settled in the armchair. She would wait for dark - easier to make her get-away - and then she would put a bullet in Bartowski.

_One in Walker and one in Miller too - you, know, as a professional courtesy._

Forrest prided herself on completing her mission. Completely.

xXx

After waiting for it to grow dark, Lester and Jeff somehow managed to climb the ladder on the back of the Buy More, Lester ferrying the rifle case. Maybe Lester's strange gods were sheltering them. Maybe his star was rising. Maybe his higher destiny was finally about to arrive. Maybe. It did not really matter. He was on the roof. Jeff too.

_This was going to work. It was_.

xXx

Claudia sighed and glanced at the other side of the bed. Alexei was asleep, his sharp features relaxed, his salt-and-pepper hair messy. She looked at her apartment ceiling.

It had been wonderful. Alexei had said the words, told her he loved her. They had made heated love as the Chinese food got cold. Alexei was himself but different. Slower, more careful, even solicitous. He looked at her with wide eyes and caressed her with soft hands. The look she sometimes saw in his eyes, the look she always feared, the look of the hunter, never appeared. He alternated between being mellow and intense - but there was never a hint of roughness or of demand. She had no idea if the changes were permanent, but the changes were there, and she had never expected to see them. She reached out and smoothed his hair, her hand applying the barest pressure. "I love you, Alexei," she whispered.

xXx

Lester put out his hand and Jeff handed him the small, long box he had been carrying. Lester opened it. Night vision scope. Lester grinned to himself: _Acme's finest. _ Ignoring Jeff's sigh, Lester began the assembly of the rifle, stand, scope, and silencer. He readied everything and then began slowly to scan the facing windows of the Motel Six.

xXx

Sarah shook Chuck's shoulder. "Chuck, Carina will be coming over in a minute. I still haven't heard anything from Volkoff. Time's getting short, though. We need to come up with a plan."

She watched as Chuck roused himself, trying to shake off the sleep. She had fought to wake up when the alarm on her phone went off, beeping softly, and she had fought harder to make herself break contact with Chuck to get out of bed. But she had done it. She called Carina even before she got dressed, then put her phone in her purse.

Carina reported that all was quiet. Sarah was hoping they could figure out a plan. She knew that Volkoff would begin to get antsy tonight and by tomorrow would begin to want answers about the hit. Her dad would not be in danger yet, but Volkoff would likely begin to threaten her about her dad tomorrow if nothing were done.

Chuck stood up and took Sarah in his arms. She hugged him back as hard as she could, trying to tell him what the afternoon had meant to her. Everything. There was a soft knock on the door. Sarah went to answer it. As she did, Chuck walked to the window, stretching on the way. He got to the window and stood there for a second, looking out at the dark parking lot, the city lights in the distance.

xXx

Lester had been working window-by-window with no luck. There were windows with the curtains open, but he had seen no one inside. There were windows with the curtains closed, and he had no idea what might be behind them. He was making a second pass, in reverse, along the second-floor windows, when suddenly Bartowski, greenish in the scope, was staring at him. Lester jumped and almost pulled the trigger and yanked his head back from the scope. Then he chided himself; Bartowski could not see him even though he could see Bartowski. _Moron. _He lowered his head to the scope again. Bartowski was gone. _Shit. _

xXx

Sarah grabbed Chuck and pulled him from the window. Carina shook her head.

Sarah's eyes were imperative. "Chuck, no, please don't do that. I don't know if we are in danger, but we should act as though we are. That's why Carina stayed awake. It's why we need a plan."

Chuck nodded, disconcerted. "Sorry, this is all new to me."

"I know, Chuck, it must all seem surreal. Bear with us. Bear with me. Until we get out of this. Then...you can do whatever you think is best." Sarah glanced away as she finished.

Chuck took her hand. "When this is done, Sarah, we will do whatever _we_ think is best. I'm with you. I thought I made that clear." He glanced at the rumpled bed and she followed his glance.

She squeezed his hand. "Sorry, Chuck, this is all new to me."

He grinned at that. Carina groaned softly. "You two are killing me…"

A metallic whir and click.

The door to the room was pushed back. A blonde woman, about the same size as Sarah, stood in the doorway.

She had a silenced pistol in her hand.

She entered the room, her pistol trained on Chuck.

Everything shifted. Everything moved with exaggerated slowness. Someone turned the world's sound off, toyed with its color settings, and darkened its hue.

Chuck felt faint. Sarah stepped in front of him.

xXx

Forrest had decided it was time.

She decided to climb the stairs, and felt like luck was definitely on her side when she found the stairwell unguarded. She crept up the concrete stairs slowly, all eyes and ears and silenced pistol, poised for anything. Nothing happened. She got to the final few steps before the second-floor landing and she stopped. She held her place and held her breath. She heard a door close in the second-floor hallway. Then, she heard a faint knock. She sprang up the final steps to the landing. The fire door had a vertical pane of safety glass in it, heavy and latticed by wire. Despite its slightly distorting effect, Forrest saw Miller step through a door a few doors down the hallway.

Forrest reached into her jacket pocket and touched the skeleton key card. Assured it was there, she slowly rotated the fire door handle. It turned soundlessly. She pulled the door toward her, praying it would swing quietly. It did. She stalked into the hallway. Without pausing, she strode to the door Miller had entered. It was the room above the one Forrest had been hiding in on the first floor. She stopped. Listened. Three voices.

Gun up in her right hand, she slid the key card into place with the other. Red light. Green light. Palming the card, she turned the knob and pushed the door open hard.

Her gun was extended into the room immediately, leading the way. In front of it, in front of Forrest, stood Miller, Bartowski, and Walker. They were frozen.

Forrest pointed her pistol at Chuck's chest as she strode into the room. The door, bouncing back from the shove she had given it, closed behind her. Miller was closest to her, and Forrest shifted her focus to check on her for a splinter of a second.

Walker seized that shift in focus and stepped in between Forrest and Bartowski.

xXx

Claudia was standing in the kitchen in her short silken robe, pouring herself a drink. She had slept for a little while then got up, leaving Alexei in bed. She had turned on some music, low, and stood listening to it for a little while, swaying.

She was not sure what she had really gotten herself into - but she surely was into it. Alexei was Alexei. She did not know much about him in terms of detail, but she knew enough. He was a deadly man in a deadly business.

Even if he had changed, those around him had not. He might be able to step back from the life he had led and sink into the safety of obscurity, but there would always be the threat of the law and of old enemies. She understood all of that. Understanding that did not change the way she felt, did not stop her swaying.

Two arms slipped around her and she felt Alexei nuzzle her neck. She sighed and she turned to him.

She felt what she felt. Alexei was Alexei. She kissed him.

xXx

"Alexandra," Sarah said calmly once she was in front of Chuck.

"Bitch," Carina offered.

"Good to see you both too," Forrest returned, smirking. "And it looks like I am the one with her gun,"-she shifted her gaze to Bartowski, his head visible above Walker's-"right, Mrs. Know-It-All? No one here but all us girls and my gun…"

"Why are you here, Alexandra - I heard Graham sent you packing…" Sarah matched Forrest's smirking tone.

"Psycho bitch," Carina explained.

Sarah saw anger flash in Forrest's eyes. Sarah moved her hand slowly behind her and pushed softly against Chuck's leg. He seemed to understand after a moment and took a short step back, toward the window.

"You're one to talk, Miller. Only the DEA would have you. A real alphabet agency wouldn't touch your skinny ass."

"Everyone wants to touch my skinny ass, I'll have you know...Well, everyone except Chuckles here, who only has hands for one ass…"

Forrest wasn't listening to Miller. "And you, Walker, you were supposed to kill this...man?...Let's _say _'man'. Have you gone soft? Volkoff was worried, so he hired a real professional."

Sarah narrowed her eyes. "So that's your new gig, Alexandra. Hit_man_?"

"You can't tell me you are standing in judgment, Walker. What have you been doing lately?"

Sarah gave Forrest an icy grin. "It's complicated…"

Sarah pushed Chuck again gently, backward, closer to the window. It was not a great option but at the moment it was one - through the glass of the window and to the ground. They weren't that far up. Sarah also was trying to create more distance between herself and Carina, make it harder for Forrest to control them both at once.

"I bet it is. Doesn't matter. The best woman is going to win, and that would be me. Now, move, Walker. It's time for me to end it all for Mrs. Know-It-All, for all of you."

xXx

Lester had been keeping a bead on the window. His patience was rewarded. He saw Bartowski-or Bartowski's back. Greenish glow. Lester settled the crosshairs on Bartowski. He tried to calm himself, slow his breathing.

xXx

Alexei pulled back from the kiss after a moment and looked into Claudia's eyes. Her beautiful eyes. No one had ever looked at him like that before - expecting, at least hoping for, the best from him. He gave her a quick squeeze and went and located his pants on the bedroom floor.

He dug his phone out of his pocket and sent a series of texts to Walker.

**Sent a second pro after MKIA. Should not have sent the first. Sorry. Be careful. **

**Contract now null and void. Consider the terms of our agreement satisfied. **

**I am freeing your father.**

**Have a good life, Agent Walker.**

Volkoff wished he had some way of calling off Forrest. But he had no idea how to do that. At least he had reduced the odds against Mrs. Know-It-All, assuming that Walker or Forrest had not already killed her.

He called his team at the safe house, the ones who watched over Jack Burton, and instructed them to take Burton to his daughter's apartment.

xXx

Forrest waved her gun at Sarah menacingly. "Move it, Walker. Or I will just shoot you first."

From her purse, Sarah's phone beeped and kept beeping. For a moment, Forrest's concentration broke.

Carina whirled and landed a kick to Forrest's side, sending her sideways toward the bed. Sarah's phone continued to beep. Sarah turned and grabbed Chuck, knocking him to the floor. Forrest's pistol spit and plaster sprinkled on Sarah and Chuck from the bullet's burying itself in the wall.

Forrest landed on the bed and scrambled to her knees. But Carina tackled her there, and another shot went wild, hitting the armchair and sending tufts of foam into the air. Sarah reached out and pulled the armchair toward them, so that it proved some makeshift cover for Chuck.

She turned to Chuck. "Stay!" She jumped up and dove on the bed, where Carina was wrestling with Forrest, each trying to get control of Forrest's gun.

xXx

Chuck saw Sarah's purse next to the desk chair. He crawled for it and got there. He opened it and grabbed the silvery pistol. He had never held a gun in his life. He had read about them. He heard the sounds of the women wrestling on the bed. He found and released the gun's safety. He jumped up, the gun in his hand. "Don't move, woman, or I will shoot." He put his hand on the trigger. All three women stopped moving.

Forrest let go of her pistol. She put her hands up. Carina grabbed Forrest's gun and pointed it at her, her movement followed by a wince. "Ha!" Carina gloated. "Big bad-ass assassin finished by Mrs. Know-It-All. And your ass is _big_, Forrest."

xXx

Lester missed his chance again. But it would come back. He just had to wait. He was Job with a rifle, Jeff his comforter. Jeff sighed. He had been sighing regularly for the last couple of minutes. "Lester, man, let's not do this…"

xXx

Forrest put up her hands and backed off the bed and stood up. Chuck walked around the edge of the room, stopping in front of the window. The gun felt heavy in his hands, like it weighed a million pounds, a black hole in his fist. He was not going to let the woman hurt Sarah or Carina. But the gun was so heavy. He saw Forrest's eyes narrow in recognition. He knew what was coming.

xXx

Sarah saw it too, knew it. Forrest dove for Carina, for her pistol, her hands clawing at it savagely. She got lucky: Carina was in an awkward position on the bed, and groaned as Forrest contacted her. Forrest had thrown her body against Carina's outstretched arms. The gun fell from Carina's hands. Carina cried aloud and only then did Sarah remember that Carina had been off-duty because of her shoulder. Carina did not favor it, but Forrest's attack must have hurt it.

Sarah dove for the gun, but Forrest's momentum took her to it faster.

xXx

Chuck watched as Forrest grabbed the gun and turned to face him, rising to her knees on the bed, near the headboard.

"Get up, Walker. You too, Carina. Go stand over there. It's time to end this. I will let you both watch me kill Bartowski - that will be a special treat for Walker, I believe - and then I will kill both of you. Put the gun down, _Mrs._ Know-It-All. We both know you aren't going to shoot me." He was not, it was true. But maybe the moment when Forrest killed him would be the moment when Sarah could save Carina and herself. He could live with that. _Black humor at the end._

xXx

Sarah saw Chuck's gun hand slowly fall. Forrest was right. Chuck could not pull the trigger. As bad as the situation was, Sarah was glad. Glad. She did not want Chuck to know any part of the world she had known, the world she was going to die in after all, although she had gotten almost to the exit.

Almost.

Sarah looked at Chuck as she backed off the foot of the bed, trying to tell him all that she could with her eyes - how good the last few days had been, despite the confusions, how much his reaction to her confession had meant to her, how precious their intimate afternoon together had been, how much she already felt for him and how much more she knew she would have come to feel.

'Love' was now one of her words: she thought it as she looked at him. She could take that word with her; it was so much more than she had expected to take with her. She was almost ready. She would spring on Forrest, on the gun. Maybe Volkoff would free her Dad, after it was all over, if Sarah was dead. But she had to save Chuck, even if it meant she died. She had to save him no matter what.

xXx

Lester tried to forget Jeff's sighing. But it was bothering him. Lamentations. The anticipatory regret he felt before had returned. Different rooftop, same feeling. Lester sighed, blowing out a breath as he looked through the scope. Jeff jerked, then lunged at Lester. "No, Lester, don't." He slammed into Lester and Lester yanked the trigger accidentally.

xXx

Chuck still held the gun up but Forrest knew it was an empty gesture now. Forrest waved him away from the window. She did not want her bullet to pass through him and shatter the window. No need for extra noise, extra mess, extra trouble. Chuck sidestepped and the window shattered. Forrest missed the sight and sound.

xXx

Sarah was ready to throw herself on Forrest's gun when the window shattered. A large hole appeared in Forrest's forehead and the hair on the back of her head blew up like she was standing in sudden gale. Her face went blank, and then a rivulet of blood ran down her forehead and along the bridge of her nose. Before it dripped off, Forrest fell limply and face-forward off the bed and onto the floor.

Sarah re-directed her spring, bounding to Chuck and tackling him to the floor. She waited for more shots. None came. Carina had dived to the opposite side of the bed, gasping in pain when she landed, and she called out: "What the hell is going on, Walker? Who _else_ wants to kill your boy-toy?"

"I have no idea. Stay down."

"That's my plan."

They stayed on the floor, Sarah wrapped around Chuck, Carina on the other side of the bed, for five minutes, then ten. No more shots came.

xXx

"Damn it, Jeff! Look what you made me do." The rifle stand had snapped. Lester knew he had fired the rifle. He felt the recoil. He believed the shot had been fired harmlessly into the air above the Motel. "I wasn't going to do it, Jeff. You're right. This isn't the way to my...to our...destiny. We need to get out of here."

Lester hurriedly packed up the rifle, and broken bits of the stand, handing Jeff the night vision scope to put it back in the box. Lester zipped the case shut. "When we get home, Jeff, let's look at the Want-Ads. We need a new job, a new life."

They climbed down the ladder in the dark, Jeff first, Lester second.. No one stopped them; no one saw them. They got in the van and drove around the Buy More. When they got to the front, Jeff stopped the van, staring.

"What are you doing, Jeff? We need to get out of here."

Jeff pointed at the Buy More's front window, at something in it. It was a sign: _Help Wanted_. Lester grabbed a pen and a used napkin from the dashboard, and copied down the number.

Lester grinned at Jeff. Jeff grinned at Lester. Onward and upward.

Lester looked down and realized Jeff was still barefoot. Baby steps.

xXx

Sarah was still holding Chuck. Carina peeked up over the bed, looking out the shattered window and then over to Sarah and Chuck. She and Sarah made eye contact. Carina understood. She lowered her head and bear-crawled as best she could over to Sarah and Chuck. He was watching her approach.

"Shit, Sarah, it's like a joke: _how many hitmen does it take to kill Mrs. Know-It-All_?"

Sarah laughed and Chuck did too, although their laughter did not last long. Carina reached them as their looks became serious. Carina saw Sarah flick her glance to Forrest's body and Carina blinked in answer. "Sarah, take Chuck out of here." She got her key card from her back pocket, handing it to Sarah. "I'll see about things in here.

Sarah mouthed a _thank you_ and she and Chuck crawled to the door and out into the hallway. Chuck grabbed Sarah's purse as they crawled past it. Sarah had taken her gun from him.

xXx

Carina waited a minute or two. Still no shots. She crawled to the window, her hands getting tiny cuts and splinters from the shards of glass, and she grabbed the curtain cord and closed the curtains. No shots. She stood up, her shoulder throbbing, and pressed against the wall next to the window. She looked at Forrest. There was a growing stain around her head on the carpet. Carina thought maybe she could contain it.

Carina stayed close to the wall, moving around the edge of the room, and then quickly stepped across the room to the bathroom. She took the empty trash bag out of the can and, getting down again on her hands and knees, she crawled over to the body.

Grimacing in pain, nauseated by the holes in Forrest's head, front and rear, she pulled Forrest's head up and slid the plastic bag over it. "Believe me, sister, right now you look better this way. And for the record, you _were_ one psycho bitch."

Carina took a deep breath and stood up. There wasn't much more she could do. She was now almost certain that the shooter must have gone. She went back to the bathroom and washed her hands, rubbed her shoulder, rolling it back and forth.

She and Sarah and Chuck now needed an exit strategy.

xXx

In the hallway, Chuck and Sarah stood up and embraced. She kissed him quickly and then they ducked into Carina's room. Sarah put her gun in the back of her pants and held out her hand. Chuck handed her the purse. She opened it and grabbed her phone. She remembered that her phone had beeped, distracting Forrest. The text notification light on her phone was blinking slowly. She checked the text. It was from Volkoff. It was not what she expected. She read it twice. Then she handed the phone to Chuck. He read it twice.

"So, was the second one that woman," he gestured toward the room next door, "or was it the shooter?"

Sarah shook her head. She was not entirely sure she trusted Volkoff's text, but the very bizarreness of it seemed to testify to its trustworthiness. She decided to gamble on it.

She called Volkoff. He answered after one ring. "Agent Walker. I don't know that we have ever talked on the phone before. I trust this means you are safe?" Volkoff sounded like and unlike himself. Sarah was confused.

"I am. So is Mrs. Know-It-All. Alexandra Forrest is dead."

"Ah. Well, if I had a horse in that sweepstakes, it would have been you, Agent Walker. Forrest was a mere shadow of you. I am glad Mrs. Know-It-All is okay. I've been reading the column; I'm a big fan! Let her know." Sarah took the phone from her ear and looked at it, as if it were radioactive. She returned it to her ear.

"Did you send two other hitmen besides me?"

"Two? No. Just the one. Forrest."

"Well, I am not actually the one who killed Forrest. Someone shot her from a distance. Impressive shot. Marksman-like. We have no idea who. There was a van outside my place and outside Mrs. Know-It-All's place."

"A _van_, you say?" Volkoff sounded curious, almost amused. "That is...interesting. But no one else was there on my orders."

"Look, Volkoff, I need a favor. I'm at a hotel, in one room with Forrest's body in the next. It's a mess. The window of that room is shattered and there is other damage. Forrest got off a couple of shots. And, as I said, Forrest got shot. Is there any chance you could…"

"Clean things up? Where are you?"

"A Motel Six," she began and then told him the address.

"Oh," Volkoff commented, "I know the owner of that particular Motel Six. Just leave the rooms to me. I will send a team as soon as we finish our call. It will be my formal apology to you for...everything. Oh, and your father is now at your apartment, a free man."

"Apology is accepted. Thank you. Thank you for freeing Dad." She ended the call and looked at Chuck. "Okay, believe it or not, Volkoff's going to see about...the mess. Let's make sure we have everything and let's get the hell out of here."

xXx

Lester's phone rang. Volkoff. Lester gulped. "Yes, Mr. Volkoff, sir?"

"Lester, what have you and Jeff been doing tonight?"

"Oh, you know, sir, the usual. Driving around in Jeff's van…"

"You didn't by any chance take a shot at Mrs. Know-It-All?"

"No, no, sir. You said that was a job for a professional."

"Perhaps I was wrong. You are sure you didn't…"

"We didn't. But, um, since I - since we - have you on the phone, sir, Jeff and I….must regretfully...tender our resignations."

"Really?" Volkoff sounded mildly surprised.

"Yes, sir, we've decided that...laundry...isn't for us. We are thinking about new careers in electronics."

"Well...best of luck. I can mail your final checks."

"Yes, please, and thank you, sir."

Volkoff hung up.

Lester looked at Jeff and Jeff nodded. Then Jeff laughed and began to sing: "_Nights in white satin, never reaching the end!_" Lester shrugged and joined in. "_Letters I've written, never meaning to send…"_

Jeff stopped singing to listen. "Lester, you have the voice of an angel!"

xXx

Sarah, Chuck, and Carina left the hotel through a side door. Sarah and Chuck were holding hands and Carina was walking beside them, holding her sore shoulder. They got to the car and headed away. Sarah's phone rang. She answered.

It was Volkoff. "I discovered who the third assassin was. I did not send him...Them, actually. Anyway, Mrs. Know-It-All has nothing more to fear. This is done."

"Thank you, again, Volkoff."

"Well, _Sarah, _I don't know if we will ever talk again, but, please, call me 'Alexei'."

"Goodbye, Alexei." Ending the call, Sarah blew out a breath. She told Chuck and Carina what Volkoff said.

"Do you believe him, Sarah?" Carina asked from the back seat.

Sarah pursed her lips, thinking about Volkoff, the change in his tone, and his reading of Mrs. Know-It-All. _Her_ Mrs. Know-It-All. "Yeah, Carina. I do."

Sarah reached over and took Chuck's hand. He gave her that smile, her smile. Hers.

That smile. That smile was her future.

* * *

_Dear Unsure in Utica,_

_Knowing whether you are in love is a challenge. So is knowing whether you are loved. _

_You can't know you are in love as you know you are in pain, or have eaten your fill, or have poison ivy, or have a hairline fracture. Love is not a rash or a physically discoverable condition. _

_You know that you love when you pass the tests; you know that you love because of what you are willing to do or not to do, what you are willing to take on or give up. You know that you love because you change. _

_You know that you are loved in the same ways. Stop thinking of love as something hidden inside you, emotionally or physically. Think of it as visible in the weave of your life as it goes on, as a pattern that emerges. _

_Would you rather suffer than see him suffer? Would you die for him? Does his happiness itself make you happy? Ask yourself these questions. Don't sit around waiting for some peculiar feeling. Feelings matter, but they don't exhaust love._

_That's the best I can do. It's all I have. Recent experience has taught me, Mrs. Know-It-All, some valuable lessons on this topic, revealed my ignorance. I now know how far I am from really being Mrs. Know-It-All. I hope this helps, maybe a little. _

_Wishing you luck,_

_Mrs. Know-It-All_

* * *

**The End**

* * *

A/N2**: **My thanks to WvonB, Beckster1213, Chesterton, Let'sGoRed, and Fezzywhigg. If you liked this story, you should thank them.

My thanks too to all who wrote reviews or sent me PMs. I'll mention Feynman1968, TianC and Mojo1, asking them to stand for the rest.

I thought to post an epilogue, but now I don't know. I can live with the story ending here.


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